Restricted
by Flaignhan
Summary: What harm ever came from reading a book? TRHG
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **I'm venturing into multi-chapter land with Tom and Hermione. I've hit writer's block with my other multi-chapter, the monster that is By Any Other Name and so I think writing lots of Tom and Hermione shall cure me of this, and even if it doesn't, it'll be jolly good fun anyway. These chapters will be fairly short but there will also be quite a few of them. I have no doubt that in my honeymoon period with this fic I shall get the first four to five chapters out in the upcoming week, but don't quote me on that - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Anyway, let me know what you think because it's always nice to hear from you.

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**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

She loved the smell of wood polish, battered leather and old worn parchment. She loved the overpowering silence and the slight feeling of claustrophobia that engulfed her when walking between the tightly packed bookshelves. She loved running a finger along the spines of the books and rubbing the dust between her fingers.

Hermione loved the restricted section of the library.

That deafening silence was broken when she opened one of the books. A face seemed to leap out at her and began screaming loudly and shrilly. It was the sort of scream that made her think of the cruciatus curse.

In a moment of stupidity she put her hand over the mouth in a pathetic attempt to stifle the scream. As soon as Madame Pince heard she would be rushing over with her wand, her sole intention being to punish Hermione for disturbing her precious silence, and evidently abusing her books so much that they were actually screaming.

As she touched the mouth of the screaming face, her hand sunk straight through as though she had plunged it into icy water. Her shriek was overpowered by the still screaming book and as she tried to tug her hand out of the book, she found she was being pulled in further.

It was like apparating. It had that same feeling of suffocation. There was no up, no down, no light, no dark. The only thing she registered was the dreadful cold attacking her body and sucking all heat from her.

After what seemed to be an eternity, but in reality was only a moment, Hermione was spat back out of the book and landed on the hard stone floor with a thud and a groan. Her lip was bleeding from where she had crushed it between the floor and her teeth and it felt like her jaw was broken.

It wasn't broken, but all the same, it _felt_ like it.

She sat up, not immediately registering the change in her surroundings.

Once her eyes had adjusted, she realised she was in a dormitory. She looked up to see a pale faced, dark haired boy sitting on the bed nearest her, looking quite shocked. Her eyes dropped to his tie and she saw he was in Slytherin. His eyes dropped to her tie and he didn't hide the look of disgust that came with the revelation that she was a Gryffindor.

He was clutching onto the book as though it were a life line, holding it tightly against his chest, his arms folded over it protectively.

"_What_ were you doing in _my_ book?" he demanded in a well spoken, slightly bratty tone.

"It's not _your_ book," Hermione responded, "it's a _library_ book."

"It is _my _book, you have no idea what you're -" he stopped and took a breath. "I shall ask you again," he said evenly, now dispensing with his bratty tone and taking on the silky dangerous tone that reminded her so much of Severus Snape. "What were you doing inside this book?"

"I was going ten pin bowling." Hermione didn't often use sarcasm, but the patronising tone of this very typically Slytherin boy had awoken her temper.

The boy's nostrils flared angrily.

"Well what do you _think _I was doing?" Hermione asked exasperatedly. "Having a private party? _Honestly_."

The boy withdrew his wand and Hermione matched his speed. "Explain how you came to be here or I will hex you into next week," he growled.

Hermione maintained eye contact and tried to ignore the hairs raising on the back of her neck and the lump that had formed in her throat from fear. She could feel the boy's magic pulsating through the room and decided to dispense with the sarcasm.

"I don't know. One minute I was in the restricted section, the next that book was screaming at me and then I ended up in here." She then added, "with a bloody lip." She waved her wand and the blood around her mouth disappeared. She waved her wand again and the sharp pain in her jaw dulled to a gentle and much more bearable ache.

The boy looked at her curiously. "What do you mean it screamed at you? How can a book _scream_ at you?"

"A face seemed to come out of the pages and start screaming. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be getting back to Gryffindor tower."

"Yeah, good luck." He snorted as Hermione rose and moved towards the door. She whirled around to face him.

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean?" she asked tersely.

"You don't belong here, you have to go back through the book, you dunce."

It was the first time Hermione had ever been called a dunce, and the fact that her jaw was hanging open in shock did not help to dispel the boy's description of her. "What do you mean I don't belong here? Of course I belong here!"

"Well for one thing your tie is of a different style to the other Gryffindors, for another I have never seen your pathetic little face at this school and I would have noticed, what with all the hair surrounding you, thirdly, your skirt is far shorter than Dippet would _ever _ allow and lastly, you just travelled through a _book_ that's not in the restricted section and hasn't been for the last four months. So, my guess is that you don't belong here."

He seemed to be quite triumphant with his deduction and all the evidence he had collected to support it in such a short space of time.

"Dippet? Armando Dippet?"

"Yeeees," he answered in a long, drawn out and rather bored tone.

"Oh goodness..."

"Back through the book then, dear?" He enjoyed being patronising, she could tell.

"Why have you got it?" she asked. "How can you read it if it's just screaming at you the whole time?"

"Who said it was screaming at me? Perhaps it only screams at Gryffindors." he answered.

"What's your name?" she asked, struck by sudden curiosity.

"Tom," he answered, smirking ever so slightly. "Tom Riddle."

The colour drained from Hermione's face.

"You've heard of me then?"


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Thank you for the reviews you lovely people! I'm not sure where this fic is going entirely but I keep having little scenarios pop up in my head when I'm going about my daily business so I shall try to incorporate them into a rough sort of plot structure. I'm not sure if there's anything else to be said, but I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as you enjoyed the last one. Oh, and this fic will be a T rating from now on, so I thought I'd best let you know. Enjoy!

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**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

Once the book had spat her back into the library in her own time, Hermione dashed to the bathroom along the corridor, ignoring Madame Pince's angry complaints at her running. She fell into a cubicle and immediately vomited, her dinner splattering all over the porcelain toilet bowl.

When she arrived in the Gryffindor common room half an hour later, she went straight up to her dormitory in the hope of getting some sleep. Harry's call of concern about her health went unnoticed as she dragged her heavy limbs up the spiralling staircase.

Unfortunately for Hermione, sleep seemed to evade her that night. When her alarm went off the following morning waking her after the minimal sleep she had managed to get, she turned it off and went straight back to sleep, twisting and turning as she dreamt of dark haired boys and screaming books.

Ginny woke her at around midday, presumably during her lunch break. Harry and Ron had sent her up to find out what was wrong. After assuring Ginny that she would be fine and that she didn't need to go to the hospital wing, Hermione got dressed and left the dormitory, knowing with each step that she was getting closer and closer to a huge mistake.

* * *

"Do you mind? I'm trying to revise, you know." He barely looked at her as she was thrown into his dormitory face first and very ungracefully. "Why have you come back? I thought you were terrified of me..."

"I'm not terrified of you," she replied adamantly.

"You will be." He glanced up at her from his book.

It seemed strange, seeing him act so naturally, so _human-like_. His knees were drawn up to his chest and his large full pillows were propped up behind his back. One arm was resting on his knee, the long spidery hand dangling down, occasionally brushing against his shin, only moving when he needed to turn the page.

"What are you reading?" Hermione asked, settling herself on the opposite end of the bed. He frowned at this, but did not look at her.

"Spellman's Advanced Syllabary. It's a load of tosh actually, I think he's gone a bit wrong up top."

"It goes out of print in a few years," Hermione informed him.

"Should you be telling me that?"

"What, because your future depends so much on the print run for that book? Mind if I look at it?"

"Yes, I do mind." He tightened his grip on the book ever so slightly, clearly thinking that Hermione was rude enough to summon it even when she had been denied permission to look at it.

"Oh come on, I've being trying to get hold of a copy for ages."

"Why? It's not worth the parchment it's written on."

"So why are you still reading?"

"Because I cannot leave a book unfinished. I must persevere even with the most poorly worded nonsense and stick it out to the end."

"Even if it was a stuffy romance novel with stereotypical damsels in distress?" Hermione asked with a coy smile.

"What makes you think I would ever pick that rubbish up in the first place?"

Hermione didn't reply, merely fiddled with some loose stitching on the emerald duvet cover.

"Why did you come back? And why now?" he asked again, finally putting the book to one side.

"I -" Hermione paused. "What d'you mean 'why now'?"

"Why after seven months have you decided to inflict your presence upon me again?"

"Seven months..."

"Do you always repeat things that you find difficult to understand?"

Hermione shot him an unimpressed glare. "For your information it's only been about eighteen hours where I'm from."

Tom suddenly seemed to pay attention. He was no longer acting like the bored sufferer of an unwelcome guest, and was now sitting up straight, attentive to all she was saying. "Eighteen hours... now that _is_ a mystery." He stroked his chin as he frowned, trying to come to a logical conclusion as to why this strange girl could travel in time via a book and why time in her world progressed so much more slowly than in his own.

"Go back into the book," he said at last.

"You know you could just try subtle hints rather than great big bombshells if you want me to leave."

"Go back into the book and the second you get out of it, come back here."

"Well – oh all right then. Pass me the book."

Tom passed the book to her and as she was sucked into it she looked back at him to see that he was watching her with fiercely curious eyes, taking in every detail of the transportation.

Hermione was thrown back into the restricted section with a rather unpleasant thud and she was sure she bruised her back upon impact.

Following Tom's instructions, Hermione opened the book again and allowed herself to be sucked back through. Being deprived of air twice in a row took its toll, because when she was on her knees on the dormitory floor, she struggled to catch her breath, panting loudly.

"What's that?" a deep voice called through the darkened dormitory. It was the middle of the night and Hermione's eyes widened in panic.

"Never you mind, Pyrites." Tom's voice was instantly recognisable and with a surprisingly strong grip for a boy so lean, he pulled Hermione up onto the bed then followed this action much to Hermione's surprise and disgust by kissing her hard, holding her face with those large hands of his.

She attempted to push him away but he was far too strong for her. He removed one of his hands from her and groped around on his bedside table for his wand, still kissing her roughly. Once he had his wand in his grasp he pulled away from her, directing the wand to the curtains around his four poster bed and before she could ask him what the hell he thought he was doing he had cast a silencing charm upon them.

"What else would a gasping girl be doing in my dormitory?" he asked before she could react to his rather unwelcome attention.

Hermione pulled a face, not wanting to consider how many girls had been in his dormitory for non time travel reasons. She wouldn't ever say it, but it had been quick and logical thinking and an ideal way to keep people from investigating her unexpected arrival any more. It was _not_, however, something that she wanted to be associated with.

"It's been..." Tom said, waving his wand in mid air. A small smoky fob watch appeared before him. "Two days, seven hours, twenty eight minutes and...well, I don't suppose the seconds mean all that much."

"So if five seconds is two days and seven and a half hours..."

"Assuming it's not just randomly plopping you out anywhere it wants," Tom said, leaning over and grabbing some parchment and a quill from his battered old satchel. Hermione took the opportunity to have a good look at the belongings on his bedside table, all neatly arranged, perfectly tidy. She could see nothing of particular importance there; nothing that could be a Horcrux, anyway. "If it does match up, one minute is equal to twenty four days...seven times twelve is eighty four so twenty _seven_ days..."

Tom continued to murmur to himself as he scribbled away on the parchment making quick calculations as Hermione peered around his bed in what she hoped was a subtle manner.

"Nosy..."

She gasped and snapped her head back to look at him.

"It doesn't match up at all. I think this is all random."

"So I could end up here any time of night or day, any month, any year and it might have only been a few minutes since I was last here?"

"Depends on whether you're going to visit again. Tell me Hermione, why are you so interested in Tom Riddle?"

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	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Guys, thanks for the reviews! I love them! And I just realised that this is my 50th story! (Well, 50th after having deleted all the ones I felt too ashamed to keep up.) Updates will be daily, at least until chapter 5 which I'm about to write, hopefully I'll be able to keep in a steady rhythm because the chapters are shorter than I'd normally write and also because your reviews motivate me like nothing else. I hope you're enjoying this as much as I'm enjoying writing it, although there's not as much Tom in this chapter. Next chapter will help us all get over that though. :D

* * *

Restricted.

by Flaignhan.

* * *

Hermione stuttered and stumbled after his question, and she could see Tom smirking in the dark.

"I'm not interested, I just – just..."

"You just can't help but be fascinated by me?"

Hermione tutted her disagreement. "I am curious about that book and how it manages to be a time travelling mechanism. _That_ is all _I'm _curious about."

"Quite," Tom replied softly. He poked his wand at the half melted candle sitting on his bedside table and it lit, casting a dim orange glow over them, flickering slightly from a draft that had broken its way through the gap in the curtains.

"You mean to say you're not curious about it at all?"

"Perhaps I already know its secrets." The side of Tom's lip curved into a mocking smirk but Hermione knew he wasn't telling the truth.

"Or perhaps you don't," she said boredly, making a move to grab the book from his lap.

Tom quickly grabbed onto her wrist with a vice like grip, causing Hermione to cry out in pain and shock. "Ask before you touch," he whispered softly, as though teaching a small child a lesson.

"May I see the book, please?" Hermione asked, looking Tom straight in the eye, trying not to wince as his fingers dug into the flesh of her arm.

"No."

Hermione's arm was released and flung back towards her with little regard for social etiquette.

"I have already told you, it's _mine_."

"And I've already told _you_ that it's a library book!"

"How far in the future are you from?" Tom changed the subject with alarming speed and Hermione took a few moments to register the question.

"I can't tell you that, can I?"

"Yes."

"Believe me Tom, I know every single law about time travel and I know that telling you exactly where I'm from is breaking about a dozen laws. I don't know about you, but spending a couple of years in Azkaban isn't my idea of a relaxing holiday."

"Oh I don't know, I hear it's got a nice atmosphere."

Hermione almost laughed.

The conversation lapsed and Hermione looked around as though searching for something to say. In reality she was trying to get a good look at Tom's possessions. That was the real reason she had returned, the real reason she hadn't run away without looking back. That was the reason that she insisted upon acting so civilly towards the teenage boy who had already killed at least once.

"Why don't you just be open about it and conduct a search?"

"What?"

"You're always looking at my things. Subtlety is not your forte, I might add. What are you looking for?"

"I'm just _curious_," Hermione told him.

"Well I can see that. But about _what_, exactly?"

"Well it's rare to find a Slytherin with at least _some_ brains so I want to know what sets you apart from all the other Slytherins I've been unfortunate enough to meet."

"You want to know what sets me apart?"

"Yeah," Hermione answered airily, glad that he had swallowed her lie. She only glanced into his eyes briefly, fearing that he may have already mastered legilimency and would be able to see straight through her.

"I think you already know what sets me apart," Tom replied silkily. "I think you know all about me."

"All about you? No, I wouldn't say that," she tried to keep her voice steady and wished she was more adept at lying.

"So why on Earth did you go so dreadfully pale when I told you my name?"

"Tom if you keep up with this I shall never return and the book shall remain a mystery."

"I can deal with that," he replied. "But the question is, can you?"

Hermione tried to tug the book out of his hands with the express intention of getting back to the restricted section. _Her_ restricted section. Away from Tom. Away from his intrusive and possibly dangerous questions. Away from Lord Voldemort.

Tom held tight onto the book but Hermione did not give up her fight. She moved towards him and got a better grip on the book, trying to prise his fingers off of the thick volume with one hand while keeping a hold of it with the other. She knew she was fighting a losing battle when her mind offered up the possibility that he might just get bored of squabbling and let her have it.

With an almighty pull, Tom wrenched the book away from Hermione, causing her to overbalance and fall into his lap.

"While you're down there..." he began, twirling a lock of her hair in his pale fingers.

Hermione turned scarlet, snatched the book from him and disappeared into the darkness, the last sound she heard being Tom's amused chuckle.

* * *

"You all right?" Harry asked at dinner.

"_Fine_," Hermione replied a bit more savagely than she'd intended, still furious from her encounter with Tom. Evil or not, teenage boys were all ultimately after one thing and one thing only.

She seized the jug of pumpkin juice, causing it to slosh around, almost spilling, and filled up her goblet. She drunk deeply in the hope that the cool juice would help her to calm down.

"Are you sure?" Harry persisted, "you seem a little..."

"I'm fine, _thank you_."

Harry took the hint. "I got your homework for you today. And I got copies of notes for you."

Hermione suddenly felt very guilty as Harry pulled his bag out from under the Gryffindor table and extracted a stack of parchment from the mess inside. "Thanks," she said quietly.

"You sure you're all right? You looked really ill yesterday and it's not like you to miss lessons..."

"It was just a stomach bug, I'm fine now, honestly. I've just had a bit of a trying day."

"_Merlin_,I can smell the dirt from here."

Harry and Hermione turned around to see Malfoy, accompanied as always by Crabbe and Goyle.

"_Shut up_, Malfoy," Harry growled through gritted teeth. Malfoy merely smirked and sauntered away, Crabbe and Goyle shuffling along beside him like a pair of dim child minders. "If the Slytherins are giving you trouble -"

"Harry don't worry. When all this is over -" She had been so tempted to tell him that it wasn't _the _Slytherins, it was _one_ Slytherin. One Slytherin who hadn't attended Hogwarts for nigh on fifty years. One Slytherin who had just last week sent a hurricane through Hertfordshire.

"Malfoy'll worm his way out of Azkaban just like his dad did."

Hermione couldn't help but agree.

* * *

She had silenced it at least. The face however was still trying to pull itself from the pages, making the text difficult to read and making it even more difficult to keep her concentration.

"Immobilus!" The face froze on the page, still raised and still warping the text, but it was still nonetheless, making Hermione's job a lot easier.

So far she had realised that it was a book about Horcruxes. She hadn't read it in depth; the writhing face had somewhat hindered her but she'd got the general idea. That must have been why he was so possessive over the book – because he didn't want anyone else to know what he was reading, what he was planning.

Hermione turned to the back of the book and saw what he meant when he said that the book belonged to him. There was one sole name in the list of people who had borrowed the book from the library, and there, at the top of the impossibly old piece of parchment, was the name 'Tom Riddle', written in small neat letters. The date he had first borrowed the book was the twenty-third of May, 1942. The return date had been left blank.

Hermione frowned at this. When had he finally handed the book back in? Surely he must have done so whilst still at school, so he should have returned it by 1944, shouldn't he?

The absent return date made her more curious than anything else. More so than its exceptional time travel qualities or the screaming face that seemed to have taken such a dislike to her.

She sighed and unfroze the face, although she didn't remove the silencing charm. She closed the book with a dull thud and pushed it back onto the shelf. She sat there for a few more moments, back leant against the opposite shelf, arms wrapped around her knees trying to work out several curious problems all at once.

She was disturbed, however, by Ernie Macmillan who was boasting to Hannah Abbot about how he had been given permission by Professor Flitwick to take out two books from the restricted section of the library, and that not many students were allowed such luxuries.

"Oh, hello Hermione, what are you doing here?" he asked, almost tripping over Hermione's toes, not spotting her sitting on the floor.

"Just browsing," she replied getting to her feet.

"Does Madame Pince know you're in here? You'd better get out sharpish before she catches you."

"Professor McGonagall gave me permission to come in here whenever I like," Hermione told him, holding back a smile as Hannah's face lit up with glee behind Ernie's shoulder. "Anyway, I'll get out of your hair, I can always come back later."

Hermione wasn't normally one for boasting, but seeing as Ernie was being so deliberately boastful and arrogant to Hannah, she had deemed her actions fit for the moment.

When she left the restricted section, it took a moment or two for her eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight pouring in from the stained glass window in the main section of the library. Once she was used to the light and open space once more, she set off back to the common room for an evening of homework and reading.

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	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Thanks for all the reviews guys, you're all wonderful and brilliant and I love you ever so much (in a strictly author/reader type way, nothing more). I hope you enjoy this chapter, let me know what you think. =]

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**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

She blamed Harry and Ron.

They were at Quidditch practice and she had finished all her homework. She couldn't bare to get involved with Parvati and Lavender's conversation about Barkov's Brilliant Blusher which the pair of them had been harping on about for days. Hermione didn't dare tell them they looked like a couple of clowns whilst wearing it, because she had to share a dormitory with those two and would never hear the end of it if she insulted their precious make up.

So it was Harry and Ron's fault. Their fault that she was making her way towards the library knowing full well she would be diving into that book of dark magic to go and see the teenage boy who would become the most feared wizard of all time.

When she put it like that, she considered turning around and going back to the common room. But when she reasoned that he might one day work out how the book was doing exactly what it was doing, and may possibly tell her the details, she ended up walking a little faster. Not only that, but the hunt for the Horcruxes was also important, and while her (not so) subtle searches had been unsuccessful so far, time was passing at a faster rate in his world and she always arrived as a surprise. There was every chance that she might catch him with one of his Horcruxes. There was also every chance that she would not, but Hermione would not be a pessimist.

* * *

She landed heavily on her knees and yelped as they collided painfully with the stone floor. It wasn't until a few moments later that she realised that she was not in the Slytherin dormitory. She wasn't even in the library.

The room was silent, despite there being around twenty five people present. They were all looking at her with a shocked expression. She was surrounded by torn pieces of worn and creased leather, parchment, smashed ink bottles, bent quills and several books; one of which she recognised instantly.

Looking down the gap in the rows of students, she saw Dumbledore, considerably younger and considerably more alive than in her own time. He looked more bemused than anything else and Hermione turned her gaze to Tom, in the hope that he would be able to provide a reasonable (and untrue) explanation as to why she had suddenly burst forth from his school bag. Preferably her escape route would be one that didn't involve him assaulting her, as he had last time.

His eyes seemed to be boring into her and he looked like he was trying to control an angry outburst. His jaw was quivering slightly and he was breathing loudly. "Professor," he said icily, "may I be excused? A girl seems to have grown out of my bag."

"You may, Tom. See me in my office after dinner to receive your homework."

"Yes sir," Tom replied, his teeth grinding together audibly. He pointed his wand at his bag and the pieces flew back together, mending in an instant. The books, parchment, ink and quills returned to his bag with another wave of his wand and he grabbed Hermione by her upper arm, causing her to cry out, hauled her to her feet and pulled her roughly from the classroom, all heads turning to follow their movement.

Once the door was shut Hermione heard the outbreak of conversation come from the classroom and after a moment or two, Dumbledore had silenced them and continued with the lesson.

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?"

"Nursing a bruised arm, that's what I'm doing!" Hermione responded irritatedly, rubbing her arm which was sore from where he had grabbed it.

For a moment she thought he was going to slap her, but he mastered himself and refrained from violence. "You can't just _appear_ in the middle of a class!"

"Because I've got control over that book have I? I can just pop a date in and it takes me straight there does it?"

Tom growled but said nothing, and instead strode away from her quickly, still angry with her despite knowing that it was not her fault.

Hermione followed, having no other option. Her ticket home was in his satchel and if he decided to disappear into the Slytherin common room without her, she wouldn't be able to get home until he left again to go to see Dumbledore and that would be hours away.

"It's not my fault," she repeated as they climbed the spiral staircase to his dormitory. "Don't blame me for this."

"That old muggle lover's going to get involved now. Don't you see what you've done? He's going to confiscate my book -"

"Library -"

"- _my_ book and he's going to investigate it himself. He's going to interfere like he always does and he's going to ruin it all like he always does. He's going to send you back and tell you not to come back -"

"I didn't know you cared," Hermione interrupted dryly.

"and we won't be able to carry out any more experiments with it! As _if_ I care about you."

"You were the one that kissed me last time. You were just _so_ pleased to see me."

Hermione was infuriating him more and she could tell. After trying to calm him down by repeatedly telling him that it wasn't her fault and it was an unavoidable mistake she was riling him up again by being a n insufferable pain in the neck.

Tom flung himself onto his bed, spreading himself out so there would be no room for her, but Hermione just lifted his legs and moved them to one side, taking her usual spot at the end of his four poster. He waved his wand and the curtains flew shut around them. Hermione raised an eyebrow.

"In case I have any visitors. I don't want them to be scarred by your ghastly sight."

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Now you're being extra horrible to me so I know that you definitely didn't enjoy kissing me. I get it, it's fine. You're immature, whatever."

"What do you mean, 'whatever'? That doesn't fit into that sentence at all."

"It's just a saying to express indifference, Tom. I'm sure you'll come across it in a few years."

"When are you from?" he demanded, sitting up and staring Hermione straight in the face. "Tell me!"

"I can't! For goodness' sake Tom, I am _not_ going to tell you when I'm from and that's that. End of story, okay?"

Tom threw the book at her. "Go."

Hermione picked it up and began to leaf through it. Tom had managed to stifle the screaming face, and the book at the moment, was just a book. "When are you going to give this back in?" Hermione asked curiously.

"Why?"

"Just wondered," she replied casually.

"Clearly by the time you go to Hogwarts. Some time this decade?"

Hermione shook her head.

"Later?" asked Tom, sounding more intrigued.

"I'm not saying any more, Tom. Drop it."

Tom sunk back onto his pillows, clearly deciding to press the matter another time, realising he would get no answers today.

"How long's it been?" Hermione asked after a short silence.

"A day... and a half. What about from your end?"

"Couple of weeks," Hermione responded, frowning slightly.

Tom's interest heightened again and he sat up once more. "It must be completely irregular. I wonder how it decides when to spew you out..."

Hermione grimaced at his use of the word 'spew', although it reminded her of the many nights spent rattling her tin and preaching to the Gryffindor common room in fourth year.

"D'you think it's doing any damage to me when I go through it?" Hermione asked suddenly.

Tom shrugged.

"Oh thanks for caring," Hermione said, irritated by this tactless disregard for her health.

"Well how am I supposed to know?"

"Well it's _your_ book, isn't it? Shouldn't you know if it's got any curses on it?"

"It's a _library_ book, actually."

Hermione opened her mouth indignantly but words failed her.

"_God_, you're so easy," Tom said, a smirk playing at his lips. "That's what I told Pyrites, incidentally."

"Tom!"

He smirked, and at that moment she wanted nothing more than to hex his stupid smirk and send it somewhere that the sun didn't shine. However, getting involved in a duel with Lord Voldemort was a silly idea on any occasion, so instead she showed her displeasure at his comments by opening the book and forcing herself through its pages.

When she arrived back in the library, she decided she would go back, just to have the last word.

It was the middle of the night but she didn't care. She shook him roughly and he awoke, sitting upright instantly and grabbing his wand, ready to defend himself.

"_You_ should have left the book in your dormitory, ergo, the Dumbledore debacle was _your_ fault!"

"What?"

It caught Hermione off guard, seeing him half asleep and quite confused. It made him seem almost human, just like when he had been lounging on his bed reading his book.

"Can you go? I'm trying to sleep," he yawned and laid back down on his pillows, falling asleep instantly. Hermione watched him for a few moments, listening to his gentle snoring and then went back through the book, taking care to rest the book on his bed so it didn't fall to the ground loudly once she had disappeared.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** The next chapter is a fair bit longer than this one, which is a little shorter than the other (already incredibly short) chapters. Thanks, as always, for your reviews, they do motivate me very much. I think that this is the first time that I have kept my word with regular updates (touch wood) and I believe it is down to you and your lovely reviews, so thanks a bunch guys!

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

"At least you've had the courtesy to visit me during the day this time."

"It's not my choice when I see you."

Tom said nothing.

"What happened with Dumbledore?"

"I told him I had no idea what had happened. I said you ran away as soon as we left the classroom and I didn't see you again afterwards. I don't think he believed me but then again that barmy old codger _never_ believes me."

"And I don't suppose that's got anything to do with the fact that nine times out of ten when you talk to him you're telling him a bunch of lies? So he's not so much a barmy old codger, more like the only teacher who hasn't been manipulated by you."

"I can't believe you have such a low opinion of me," Tom replied, smirking slightly. He picked a brightly wrapped chocolate out of a box of Honeyduke's Finest Treats and then offered the box to Hermione. She eyed them warily. "Oh for goodness' sake it's Christmas eve, have one."

Hermione took a chocolate and unwrapped it. She sniffed it before popping it into her mouth, half expecting to be poisoned any moment.

"Of course, I was completely aware that you would be visiting me today and thus took the time to fill every single one of these chocolates with poison, bar the one that I just ate. _Honestly_."

"Can never be too careful," Hermione replied having swallowed the chocolate.

"You can't. I've filled them with veritaserum."

Hermione's eyes widened and she made a grab for the book, hoping she would be able to escape.

"Look up gullible in the dictionary, will you?" Tom took another chocolate from the box and unwrapped it, tossing the wrapper over his shoulder so it fell down the back of the bed. He offered the box to Hermione and she took another one.

"What makes you think I'm manipulative? And what makes you think that Dumbledore knows when I'm lying?"

"Well to answer the first question, I know you and it is plain to see that you're manipulative."

Tom smirked.

"And to answer the second question, Albus Dumbledore is far too clever for the likes of you."

Tom's smirk disappeared in an instant. "Not clever enough to work out who -" Tom stopped himself, although he was too late. Hermione already knew what he was about to say.

"I know what you did to poor Myrtle," Hermione moved a little closer.

If it was possible for Tom to go paler than he already was, he did.

"Hagrid's name has been cleared. We all know it was you." She moved closer still, desperate to see the panic in his eyes. "Dumbledore never believed that it was Hagrid. Not for a second. In my time, Tom, your basilisk is dead."

"_Lies!_"

"Not lying, Tom. You wanted to know about the future and so now you know. Basilisk is gone, Chamber of Secrets closed for good, and nobody was even killed second time around."

"Should you be telling me this?"

"There's nothing you can do about it so I don't see that it matters."

His jaw seemed to quiver and Hermione knew he was livid. She considered grabbing the book and leaving, in case he turned his wand on her, but she would not be a coward. Furthermore, she knew him well enough to know that his curiosity would be stronger than his desire to hurt her. He would want to know how his basilisk had been killed, and by whom. He would want to try and stop it, if he could. Hermione knew it was fruitless. Her experience with the time turner and Sirius had taught her that. She had already been in Tom's time by the time she was born, so nothing she did here (as long as she didn't reveal too much regarding the future) would drastically affect the future anyway because it hadalready happened.

"What else do you know?"

"I know," she began in a whisper, "all about your diary."

It happened in a flash, he had pushed her onto her back and was holding her arms above her head, his face millimetres from hers, his body covering her own.

"Get off!"

"_What do you know about my diary?_"

"Tom you're hurting -"

"_Tell me!_"

He was angrier than she had ever seen him, past present or future. For the first time she was genuinely terrified of him.

"Tom _please!_" Hermione tried to wriggle out from underneath him.

"Tell me what you know!"

"Get off me and I'll tell you!"

He lowered his face and whispered in her ear. "I shall let you go once you tell me what you know."

Hermione was suffocating under his weight. She tried to take a deep breath but her chest was being crushed by his own. "Tom I can't breathe!"

"Then you'd best use your last few breaths to tell me what I want to know so I can let you go."

Thinking fast, Hermione spoke. "I know – I know you put a memory of yourself inside it. And I know it could possess people and open the Chamber."

Tom's grip relaxed a little, as did his facial expression. "And?"

"And I know that you would have been much better off giving it to Lucius Malfoy."

He got off of her and she sat up, rubbing her wrists to try and relieve the soreness.

"Lucius Malfoy?"

Hermione nodded, looking him in the eye, blinking away tears that had filled her eyes during Tom's questioning. If he believed her, then the future would go completely to plan. She had been a fool to think that time had already been planned out. Professor McGonagall had impressed upon her the importance of keeping her mouth shut when she was in the past. But Lucius Malfoy _had_ been given the diary in her own time, so perhaps it _had _been her who had caused that event to happen.

She was confused and she wanted to get out. She had gotten so carried away with her curiosity, so carried away with a desire to find out more about Tom – despite having given up on the idea that she would find out about his Horcruxes on her little trips into the past – that she had completely forgotten how dangerous it was to be here, in Lord Voldemort's company.

"Lucius Malfoy is the...son of Abraxas Malfoy?"

Hermione nodded, but said nothing.

"You know him?"

"Not really."

"You are at school with him?"

Hermione shook her head.

"You are at school with his children?"

Hermione nodded.

"Good girl."

She was offered another chocolate which she took and unwrapped with trembling fingers.

"Merry Christmas, Hermione."

Hermione said nothing.

"I _said_ 'Merry Christmas, Hermione'."

"Merry Christmas, Tom."

She took the book from him and disappeared, leaving him sitting amongst a pile of sweet wrappers.

* * *

"Harry."

Harry looked up at Hermione and set his essay to one side. "What?"

"Tell me about his diary, everything you know," Hermione's voice was weak and she looked tired. Harry frowned in concern.

"Why? Are you all right?"

"I think there must be something we missed. There _must_ be. It might help us find the other Horcruxes."

She fell onto the sofa next to him and he retold her every detail about the diary and there was nothing new. For that, she felt relieved. She had done no damage. She had been foolish, and vowed not to go back to him again.

"And he left it in Malfoy's possession?" Hermione wondered if he had followed her advice and had given it to Lucius Malfoy.

Harry nodded. "Apparently when he found out that it was Malfoy's fault his anger was terrible to behold. That's what Dumbledore said, anyway."

Something clicked in Hermione's brain and ice seemed to flood her body.

He had not been angry with Lucius Malfoy, he had been angry with _her_.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** Thanks again for your reviews! Lovely as always to hear from you. I do warn you, however, that this is the last chapter that's already written, and I'm in college for the next three days as well as being addicted to the Twilight series as of Saturday. This means that the chances of daily updates over the next few days are slimmer, but not completely out of the question. I just thought I'd be honest with you. And I think I'll be honest that I have no idea what the next chapter will be about, either. Ah, the joys of being a writer without a plan. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this longer chapter - let me know what you think!

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

Hermione steered clear of the restricted section over the following weeks and threw herself into her school work. Consequently, her essays ended up being twice as long as the amount required.

It happened one day when she was in Charms. A considerable draught caused the door to bang open, making the whole class jump. Seamus got up to close the door and Professor Flitwick continued talking.

She felt something brush against the back of her neck, but when she turned around, she saw nothing. Frowning, she returned her attention to Professor Flitwick, continuing to take notes.

"You've been avoiding me."

Hermione almost shrieked. It had been the quietest, softest whisper she had ever heard, but every single precisely pronounced word sounded as clear as though Tom had announced them to the whole class.

"Professor, may I be excused?" said Hermione in a shaky voice, "I don't feel at all well."

A hand gripped her shoulder. It wasn't painful, like Tom's grips normally were, but it was just so she knew he was still there. Just so she knew that she wouldn't be able to run away this time.

"Yes, yes, of course Miss Granger, you look awfully pale. Hospital wing I think!"

"Oh I don't think I need the hospital wing, Professor," Hermione responded as she put her belongings in her bag. "Just a little rest, perhaps."

Harry and Ron eyed her carefully as she left and Hermione tried to pretend to herself that she didn't see Harry's face twitch nor his hand dart halfway to his scar as it smarted on his forehead.

* * *

"Do you know how _dangerous_ it is for you to be here?"

"It's been six months, I knew you wouldn't be coming back so I thought _I_ would come to _you_. Interesting that it works both ways, don't you think? My disillusionment charm was rather good as well, you didn't spot me even when you were looking straight at me."

Hermione grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along, leading him upwards towards the library.

"No not that way!" Hermione hissed when Tom turned right once they reached the third floor, clearly intending to take the shortcut. "The staffroom's down there!"

"Oh don't tell me _Dumbledore's_ in there."

Hermione said nothing, but pulled him instead in the opposite direction. She felt her stomach drop as she saw Professor Slughorn bouncing merrily towards them and through the material of his robes, she felt Tom's arm tense.

"Afternoon, Miss Granger!" Slughorn said in his jolly tone. He then turned to Tom and clearly recognised him at once, for the rosiness in his cheeks was replaced by a seasick-like, greyish hue.

"Professor!" Tom began in an urgent and earnest tone. "Oh I'm so glad to see you; that vanishing cabinet on the fourth floor, some Gryffindors crept up on me and shoved me inside it and I ended up here! I was unconscious but..." he paused, as though trying to remember something, "Hermione – it _is_ Hermione, isn't it? – found me and she brought me back to consciousness but the cabinet's disappeared again so she's going to help me find it. Do you think I'll be able to get back all right?"

He was really rather good, Hermione thought as she watched Slughorn take all this in. She could see now why so many teachers had fallen for his lies and his tricks, Slughorn being one of them.

"Ah well," Slughorn said, a little colour returning to his cheeks, "that's solved the mystery of where you disappeared to for two weeks!"

"Two weeks? You mean I'm going to be here for two weeks Professor?"

"No," Hermione said, "it just means that the cabinet isn't very reliable and won't take you back to the exact moment you disappeared. We'd best continue looking, Professor."

"Erm, yes, very well Hermione. You look after Tom, won't you?"

"I'm sure I'll be absolutely fine in Hermione's company, sir."

Slughorn's face faltered at Tom's slight smile and Hermione felt more than a little offended that Slughorn hadn't tried to rescue her despite knowing full well the future of the boy standing next to her. He was in Slytherin, she supposed, so there would be no brave gestures coming from his corner.

Hermione led Tom away from Slughorn, her grip tight on his arm to prevent him from taking any more detours.

"I want to go to the Chamber."

"_No_."

"Hermione, just to see it. I just want to know if you were telling the truth."

Hermione shook her head. Tom stopped and turned to face her.

"I won't hurt you, I promise," he brushed his thumb across her cheek gently and Hermione tried to ignore it.

"I don't believe you."

"I swear on my diary," he said to her, looking her straight in the eye.

Hermione wanted to believe him, she did, but after she had just seen him lie so expertly to Slughorn she would be a fool to even consider that he was telling the truth.

"You can stay here and I'll go down then," he offered as a compromise, his hands holding her upper arms gently in a reassuring kind of way.

"You're joking! I'm not letting you out of my sight!"

"So down to the Chamber then?"

"Tom, no."

"Why not?" he asked desperately, almost like a child who wanted to go to the park but had been refused because it was a rainy day.

"Because..." she was a fool for telling him, a complete and utter fool, "I got attacked, last time."

His arms dropped back to his sides. "You're muggle born?" he whispered, as though not wanting anyone to hear. Not that there was anyone else in the deserted corridors, yet he whispered nonetheless.

"Yes."

She would not falter. She would not run. She would not show any signs of weakness.

"And you stand there, looking at me defiantly despite knowing who I am, and what I've done? What I will grow to be?"

"Yes."

"Can you clear this up for me once and for all – are Gryffindors brave or stupid? I've never quite worked it out myself."

"There's a fine line," Hermione answered. "Most of us are on the right side of it."

Tom smirked. "Well this does leave us in a pickle."

"You just promised you wouldn't hurt me."

"And I won't," he told her. "Despite your questionable parentage, you have some...admirable qualities."

Hermione couldn't believe her ears. "But I've also just seen you lie through your teeth to Professor Slughorn. Why should I believe that a man with rather unpleasant and homicidal feelings towards muggleborns will go for a nice little trip down to the Chamber of Secrets and then let me leave that place alive?"

"I can see why that would be hard to swallow," Tom said, looking towards the ceiling, "but I have no interest in killing you, so there would be no point."

"I might have believed you if it weren't for last time," Hermione told him, trying to keep her mind off of the memories from her last trip into the past.

"I lost my temper. Everyone loses their temper once in a while."

"You would have killed me if I hadn't told you."

"You're a very sensible girl so you _did_ tell me. It's all water under the bridge now, anyway."

Hermione laughed sardonically. "Oh yes, it was just a little hiccup was it? I haven't even received an apology! And you wonder why I've been avoiding you?"

"I'm sorry, okay?"

"No, you're not. Don't pretend you are."

"It was a mistake, and I apologise," he said steadily, maintaining eye contact the entire time. "I'll even let you have my wand before we go down there, how about that?"

"Tom..."

"It'll only take half an hour, Hermione. I just need to see it, _please_."

"Tom, how stupid of me would it be to go down there with you?"

"Very stupid, given all the evidence, but just give me a chance. I just need to know if I can trust you and trust what you say."

Hermione sighed. He had cemented her decision with that last sentence. He put his wand in her hand and closed her fingers around it, took her other hand in his own and led her upstairs to Myrtle's bathroom.

* * *

"That looks disgusting," Hermione said, wrinkling her nose as she looked down at the mossy stone slide.

"Do a cleaning charm then," said Tom, standing aside so she could perform the spell.

"_Scourgify!_"

The moss vanished from sight and Tom lowered himself into the gap.

"You can stay up here if you like," he told her.

Hermione considered it, but after he had slid out of sight, she too climbed into the shoot and dropped herself down.

She landed with a crunch on something unpleasant, hard and dirty. She could tell by the hairs prickling on the back of her neck that Tom was standing above her. He pulled her to her feet and guided her over the uneven floor, down a tunnel.

"Can we have some light?" he asked after he had stumbled, almost pulling Hermione down with him.

Hermione conjured one of her trademark balls of fire and levitated it so it was just in front of them, lighting the way sufficiently enough so they could avoid any more accidents. The light however had made her realise just what she had been struggling to walk over.

Hundreds, possibly thousands of tiny animal bones littered the floor and Hermione let out a sound of disgust.

"I concur," Tom said, shooting a grim smile back at her.

They walked for a short while longer but stopped when Hermione gasped.

Something large had come into view. Coils upon coils of ageing snakeskin had been lit by the tiny ball of fire hovering above them.

"It's just a skin, don't worry," Tom informed her.

He spoke for a moment in Parseltongue and shortly after there was a loud grinding sound as a circular door at the end of the tunnel opened up.

"Just a little further..."

Hermione could feel her heart racing in her chest, was sure she could hear it, and if she could hear it then surely Tom could too. She took a steadying breath as they weaved their way through puddles of stagnant water. A large statue with an ugly face came into view and Tom began to walk more quickly, tugging Hermione along with him.

Tom stopped abruptly when he saw the body of the basilisk. He dropped Hermione's hand and stared at it, as though he couldn't believe that his creature was really dead. He walked towards it slowly and Hermione watched as Tom made his way over to the head of the snake. She grimaced when she saw that there were no eyes in the sockets, just some bloody remains. There was a pool of dried sticky blood on the ground, having leaked from the hole in the roof of its mouth where Harry had plunged the sword of Gryffindor through it.

"Who killed it?" Tom asked softly.

"I don't know, I was still petrified. The mandrakes hadn't fully grown by the time it was over."

Tom continued to stare at the dead snake, his expression fixed in a steely gaze. Hermione stood to the side awkwardly. She knew Tom had had no _real_ friends at school, and so the basilisk must have been his closest companion up until now. Harry had told her that Dumbledore had said Nagini was the closest thing that the present Lord Voldemort had to a friend; perhaps the basilisk had been Nagini's predecessor.

"Let's go," Tom said at last, turning away from the rotting serpent corpse. "I want to go."

Hermione followed him from the Chamber, back down the tunnel and over the mountain of rat skulls, only stopping when they reached the slide.

"I'm going to need my wand."

Hermione held her own wand steady in her hand.

"To get us _out_, Hermione. Unless you're the expert at this?"

Hermione handed over the wand and Tom pulled her close to him, one arm clamped around her waist while he pointed his wand skywards. He murmured a few words which Hermione couldn't work out and they flew up the slide with alarming speed, Hermione's scream never quite managing to leave her mouth.

Tom got over the experience quicker than Hermione did, for by the time she had recovered the sink was back in its normal place and Tom was checking the doorway to see if the coast was clear.

"Library?" Hermione asked.

Tom nodded.

He walked quickly down the corridor and Hermione thought it seemed strange that he knew his way around the school so well. Despite the fact that he had clearly attended Hogwarts, it seemed like he was an intruder in the school, like he shouldn't know his way around as well as he did.

They reached the library just as it was starting to fill up with students who had finished classes for the day. Nobody paid much attention as Hermione and Tom wandered between the small round tables to the restricted section.

"The blonde one," Tom whispered in Hermione's ear as they passed one table. Hermione glanced over to see Draco Malfoy sneering as he turned the pages of his textbook, unimpressed with its contents. "Abraxas Malfoy's grandson?"

Hermione nodded.

"You can spot the inbreeding a mile away," he added, and Hermione felt his lips curve into a smirk against the skin of her ear. It took a lot to hold back her laugh, but seeing as drawing attention to themselves could only be a bad thing, Hermione just about managed to keep herself under control.

She let out a sigh of relief once they were in the sanctuary of the restricted section. She had only ever come across another student in here once, and that had been when Ernie had been gloating to Hannah a month or two previously.

Tom slid to the floor, his back leant against a towering bookshelf and Hermione grabbed the book from its place on the opposite shelf and sat down in front of him.

"Are you okay?" she asked softly.

"That basilisk was over a thousand years old," Tom told her. "It's part of Hogwarts' history."

"Not very nice history though, really."

"Not if you're muggleborn I suppose."

Hermione fell silent. She didn't know what to say and instead looked at the cover of the book which was resting in her lap. Tom seemed to be staring at her, but not really seeing her.

"You need to go back," she said quietly after ten minutes.

"Yeah."

"Two weeks' worth of homework to catch up on – I don't envy you."

"You're very good at making people feel better, aren't you?" Tom said sarcastically.

"I told you it was dangerous you being here," she said, trying not to sound like she was rubbing it in.

"You're going to visit me again, aren't you?"

"I...well...oh, I suppose so. Just as long as you promise not to come back this way ever again, okay? It's too dangerous."

"I will come back if you leave it too long, though."

"Well I'd best not leave it too long then, had I?"

Tom smiled, not a smirk, but a smile which threw Hermione completely off guard. He took the book from her limp hands and leaned forward, brushing his lips softly against her own.

Seconds later, the book fell into her lap and Tom was gone.

Resisting the urge to follow him, Hermione got up and took the book with her, ignoring Madam Pince's raised eyebrow when she brought the book up to the counter.

In the back of the book she wrote her own name underneath Tom's fifty year old handwriting, trying to ignore the fact that her lips were still tingling.

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Life has been uncommonly full this week (reading the whole Twilight saga in four days could possibly be the reason but there was other less important stuff like college as well) so I'm sorry for the late update. I would like to thank once again all those people who have reviewed - you have made this my favourite fic to write ever so thanks ever so much. I had terrible writer's block with this chapter and I think it suffers for it, but hopefully I'll be back on track with the next chapter. I'm not promising an update tomorrow but Monday at the latest (hopefully). I need to get ahead of my writing again. Anyway, hope you enjoy this, let me know what you think!

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

Hermione didn't wait long to go and see Tom again. In fact, she only waited until the following evening when her dormitory was empty and there would be no concerns from witnesses about her sudden disappearance into an aged and particularly grim looking book.

Upon exiting the book, Hermione attempted to breathe.

This was made impossible however by her suffocating surroundings. She was so thrown by her journey through the book that she had no idea what exactly was going on, only that her lungs were starting to strain and her throat seemed to be full of something which was not air.

Things faded and she knew no more.

When she awoke, coughing a good deal and desperate for breath, she noticed that she was laying on something hard and cold. She noticed that she was cold too, colder than normal. Her clothes seemed uncomfortably snug and her hair seemed to be less overpoweringly frizzy. As she regained her breath she looked to her right and saw the big swimming pool sized bath that she knew to be in the prefects' bathroom on the fifth floor.

She looked to her left and saw Tom kneeling next to her, dripping wet and bare chested. She coughed again and the distraction allowed her to move her eyes away from his torso. To her relief she saw he had a towel wrapped around his waist.

"I was reading the book," he explained.

"In the bath?" Hermione asked, peeling off her wet cardigan and kicking off her shoes.

"Is it really such an unsuitable place to read?"

Hermione was of the opinion that there was no unsuitable place to read and so could hardly contradict him.

"But reading _that_ book in the bath, Tom, knowing it could spit me out any minute, do you really think it was a good idea?"

"Oh I don't know. It spices up life to save a drowning girl. Don't they teach you to swim in the future?"

"Tom, normally when one swims, one is aware that one is in water."

"The wetness didn't give you a clue?" he asked softly, watching her carefully as though she might snap at him any second.

Hermione growled and stood up. Her legs shook under her weight and her knees buckled. Fortunately, Tom seemed to have predicted this and so was there to catch her when she fell.

She put her dizziness down to her recent near death experience, rather than down to the knowledge that it was only the thin wet material of her school shirt that separated his chest from the skin of her back. It certainly wasn't the way his arms looped around her waist and the way that he didn't seem to think that there was any other alternative than for Hermione to be resting in his arms while she recovered. She was also positive that it had nothing to do with the feel of his breath on her neck, which chilled her due to the fact that she was still wet.

The fact that she had considered all of these points proved to her that it most likely _was_ something to do with at least _one_ of them, but she lied to herself. This was Lord Voldemort. A younger, more handsome Lord Voldemort, but Lord Voldemort nonetheless.

She stiffened at that thought and removed his arms from her waist. She took her wand from the floor and started performing a drying charm on herself, her back turned to him.

He padded past her towards the screen in the corner and Hermione tried to keep her mind off of him getting dressed. This was made very difficult when she saw the towel being slung over the top of the screen.

Hermione took a fresh towel from the shelf in the corner and proceeded to dry her hair off. It was much easier to towel dry it than to use a drying charm, and a drying charm would do nothing to tame the frizz. In fact, it would most likely make it a lot worse.

Tom reappeared a few minutes later, fully clothed, his hair parted to one side, (though still damp) twirling his wand in his fingers.

"We can't go to my dormitory; there are people in the common room, you'll be spotted."

Hermione frowned. "Don't worry," she said, a light switching on in her head, "I know the place."

* * *

"It's a wall," Tom said blankly.

"Tom, you're so narrow minded," Hermione replied disapprovingly as she walked back and forth in front of the bare patch of wall.

Finally, a door materialised and Hermione grabbed the handle, yanking the door open.

The room had provided once again for her needs. A large, comfortable looking sofa was positioned in front of a fire place, the fire crackling away merrily, lighting the room with a warm glow. Hermione smiled and sunk into the sofa, basking in the heat from the fire. She was still cold from the episode in the bathroom.

Tom sat down stiffly next to her. When she looked at him she saw that his face was set in a deep scowl.

"What?"

"What is this room?" he asked icily.

"The Room of Requirement."

"How do you know of it?"

Hermione frowned. She doubted that it would go down very well if she told him that a house elf had told them about it when they were trying to find somewhere to practice defensive spells and hexes in order to be able to fight his future self. "I just do," she said with a shrug.

"Does everybody in your time know about it?"

"No, just me and a couple of friends."

Tom seemed mollified by this.

"Dumbledore doesn't know about it," Hermione offered, feeling uncomfortable in the tense silence.

Tom's foul mood seemed to lift and they spoke for a while about school and exams. Tom was coming up to his NEWTs, which reminded Hermione that she desperately needed to start studying for her own which would be sneaking up on her in a few months time. She immediately began to run through possible revision time tables in her head, ignoring Tom's curious gaze.

"What?" she asked finally, when she realised she had an audience.

"I want to know what you're thinking."

Hermione turned her eyes away from him immediately. As much as she had preached about Occlumency to Harry, she hadn't attempted it herself. Now, however, she tried to clear her mind as much as she could, imagining a blank space.

"I can't wait to learn Legilimency," he said. "The library hasn't got any useful books on it, but once I leave I'm sure I'll be able to find some in Diagon Alley."

Hermione tried to hide her obvious relief but Tom noticed.

"Come now, Hermione," he said, his patronising tone slipping into his voice slightly, "you don't honestly think I'd take advantage of you, do you?"

"Yes," Hermione responded, quite sure of herself.

Tom smirked. "Again with the low opinions."

"Well Tom, you do have a habit of taking advantage of people."

"I didn't kill you last time and yet you _still_ mistrust me!" he was smirking as he said this and Hermione laughed. "Why are you so comfortable being in the company of someone you know to be a murderer?"

Hermione stopped laughing. "I..."

"You don't think of me as my future self, do you? You know my future self and you don't _like_ my future self, but here you are, all the restraint in the world, no attempts on my life as you try and change the future..."

"Do you know how _dangerous _it is to mess with time?" Hermione asked, her eyes wide with horror.

"Do you?"

"Yes! Tom, seriously, even if I wanted to kill you I couldn't. So many things could go wrong if I did!"

"So why did you tell me about my diary?"

Hermione shrugged and he watched her shrewdly for a moment, trying to make a decision as to whether she was lying to him or not. She felt uncomfortable under his gaze and wanted to break the silence, wanted to distract him. Hermione knew Tom was not one to be easily distracted but even if she could just move the conversation on...

"Why did you kiss me?" she asked, curiosity suddenly hitting her.

Tom's body became rigid and for just a moment, she thought she'd inadvertently cast a body bind hex on him.

"It was a foolish mistake. I'd been through a lot."

Hermione felt her stomach drop, not enjoying being labelled as a mistake. Especially not a foolish one.

"Why?"

Hermione looked up. "What d'you mean, 'why'?"

"Why did you want to know?"

"It'd be nice to know the reason for your...attention."

"You've been through a lot today," Tom commented.

"I suppose so. It's not every day you drown in a bathroom long before you were actually born."

Tom smirked and Hermione found herself unable to remove her eyes from his lips.

"I've been through an awful lot, actually," she said softly, realising what he was getting at.

She hated herself for being so weak. His smirk was all it took for her to lose her concentration, her perspective, and her self restraint.

He moved closer to her, gracefully, so gracefully in fact that Hermione was a little jealous of his non-clumsy ways. She could smell the scent of bubble bath on his skin, could see directly into his dark eyes and suddenly wasn't worried about Legilimency.

When he kissed her she had no time to think of anything except how good it felt. She had no time to consider who he was, what he would grow to be, or even what would happen once she had left Hogwarts, leaving the book behind her.

Later, when she was back in her dormitory, laying in bed knowing she should be sleeping but feeling wide awake, she would reflect on how cool his lips were, how calm he was throughout the whole thing. She would remember the feel of his soft hands touching her face, her arms, her waist. She would also smile at the memory of his hand slipping under her school shirt to rest on the skin of her stomach.

In the present, however, she noticed how light she felt, and decided that the weight of his body on top of her own was all that was keeping her grounded. His hair was still damp as she wound her fingers through it, managing to tangle it despite it not being long enough to become particularly knotty. Her hands clenched his shirt, pulling him as close to her as was possible.

* * *

Hermione's dreams that night (once she'd managed to fall asleep) were unsettling.

She dreamed of pale, snake like faces with gleaming red eyes and no lips. Then her dreams changed and she found herself dreaming of a different face, still pale (though not a pearly white as the previous face had been) but with dark eyes, almost black. She dreamed of soft dark hair between her fingertips and cold lips pressing against her own. But when he pulled away he had red eyes with a hint of madness behind them.

She woke up covered in sweat, breathing heavily, the hairs on the back of her neck raised higher than they ever had been before.

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** Guys you never cease to be wonderful. Over fifty reviews! You don't know how much that makes me smile! Thank you! Sorry for the delay - I've been battling with coursework to get free from college for Christmas (they make you finish all your work before you go home - how rude!) and I hit writer's block again with this one. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, let me know what you think. =]

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

Hermione's dreams continued to disturb her sleep for the next week, so much so that she was so tired at the end of the day that she couldn't even be bothered to go through the book to see Tom.

She had considered the possibility that Tom had subtly hexed her when she had last gone to see him and that that was the cause of her dreams. The more likely reasoning behind them was that her conscience was finally catching up with her and reminding her how wrong her trips into the past had been.

After another particularly gruesome nightmare, she awoke, struggling for breath and shaking, her hand trembling as she moved to wipe the sweat from her forehead.

She almost had a heart attack when she looked up and saw Tom sitting at the end of her bed. She let out a scream and his hand moved to her mouth quickly to muffle the sound.

"Oh for Merlin's sake, Hermione!" Lavender's shrill voice echoed through the dormitory. "Go and get some dreamless sleep potion from Madam Pomfrey or I swear I am going to -"

"Yes, sorry Lavender," Hermione replied, tugging Tom's hand away from her mouth.

Tom frowned at her and waved his wand towards the curtains. A blanket of silence fell over them and Hermione knew that they would not be heard.

"Why are you so hot?" Tom asked, touching Hermione's cheek softly with the back of his hand.

Hermione sighed at the feel of his cold hands on her face and concentrated on cooling down. He let her move his hands around her face in what was the most effective way of cooling down (besides jumping in the lake) that she could imagine.

Tom placed a hand on the back of her neck and Hermione gasped at the coolness, not caring too much that his hands were the hands that held the wand which had caused so much damage and misery over the last fifty years.

"What were you dreaming about?"

Hermione opened her eyes, still holding one of his hands underneath her chin.

"Well?"

"It doesn't matter," she said, dropping his hand.

"You've been dreaming about it a lot. And it must have been bad because you haven't even shouted at me yet."

Hermione's mind seemed to come into focus at that moment and she saw the book on the floor by her bed. Her eyes widened. "You swore you wouldn't come back! I told you it was dangerous!"

"Don't get yourself worked up again, there's only a certain amount of time I can touch burning flesh for and it won't help if you get yourself all hot and bothered."

"I'm _not_ hot and bothered and my flesh is _not_ burning."

"Then why are you clinging to my hand like it's your only oxygen supply?"

Hermione scowled at him and moved backwards from him, propping her pillows up behind her and leaning against them. "What time is it?"

Tom shrugged. "I'll hazard a guess at night time."

Hermione's mood did not improve at this comment and she jabbed his thigh with her foot. The blow was softened by the duvet but it made her feel a little better nonetheless. She picked up her watch from her bedside table and squinted at it in the dark. It was ten past four.

"Any reason why you've decided to break abut fifty laws? Or did you just fancy a visit?" Hermione doubted very much that Tom cared about breaking laws but even so, it reinforced the validity of her argument.

"Tomorrow's my last day," he told her. "My last day at Hogwarts."

Hermione wasn't hot anymore. Ice seemed to have seeped through her body, starting from her stomach and spreading outwards. "You mean...this is the last time?"

Tom shook his head. "I'm taking it with me."

"Tom you can't! It's a lib-"

"It's _my_ book."

"But how are you going to put it back in the library before I come to school?"

"I'll find a way," he told her.

"But Tom, what if you leave it too late?"

"I _won't_."

"Won't you get in trouble? Won't they know you've taken it?" Hermione's voice was weak as she clutched at pathetic arguments to try and make him leave the book. The thought of not seeing him again was awful, but the thought of never having seen him at all was so much worse.

Tom shook his head. "Don't worry about me. I'm getting a job in Borgin and Burke's. I'm going to rent a flat as well. I've made a little money selling articles to_ Transfiguration Today_ and _Cheeky Charms_." His lip curled at the title of the last publication and Hermione held back a smile. "It's not much, but it's enough for the first month's rent. I just came to tell you not to worry if you came to visit and found yourself there rather than in school. I know what you're like; you'd probably have a panic attack."

Hermione frowned at this assessment of her nature but didn't contradict him.

"You're going to work in Borgin and Burke's?" she asked with a frown.

"Yes."

"Tom...you're better than that."

"I don't want to go into the Ministry. I don't like the idea of having people bossing me about."

"And you won't get bossed about as a shop boy?"

"There are...advantages to being a shop boy."

"That's so disappointing..." Hermione glanced down at the floor and picked at a feather poking out from her duvet. "I mean, you're above that."

"Let's not be snobbish, Hermione."

"Tom you could do a lot of good in the world."

Tom rolled his eyes.

"You've got so much potential. You're probably the best student to pass through Hogwarts since Dumbledore and you're going to work in a _shop_?"

"Just because I'm going to work in a shop it doesn't mean that I can't bring about great things."

"Yeah but your definition of great things..."

Tom smirked. "Our opinion is divided, now let's drop the matter before I lose my patience and turn my wand on you."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice was screaming at Hermione, telling her that she should run – he'd just openly threatened her. Hermione didn't move. She didn't feel unsafe and that worried her. Even after her nightmare, even after waking from it to find that he'd gone against his word and was sitting on the end of her bed, she couldn't help but feel relaxed by Tom.

"You should go back."

"Bored of me already?"

"You said you wouldn't come back here again though."

"It _was_ an emergency."

"Hardly," Hermione paused and then was struck by a panicky thought, "You said tomorrow's your last day, what if you miss it altogether?"

Tom shrugged.

"Don't you care?"

"Not when I have to make some grotesquely sentimental speech about how all the students are so spectacularly wonderful. And _definitely _not when I have to stand with Sasha Vane all day smiling for cameras. Being perfect is incredibly tiring, Hermione. Of course, you wouldn't know."

"Yes but they'll be _worried_."

"Dumbledore won't be. He'll probably have his fingers crossed that I've been eaten by the giant squid."

"You underestimate Dumbledore."

Tom didn't reply.

"So this is the Gryffindor girls' dormitory?" he stood up and peeped through the curtains. "Merlin that's a lot of red, how do you stand it?"

"Better than green."

Tom smirked, just a little. He looked around the dormitory, taking in the sleeping figures of Lavender and Parvati.

"Only three of you? Gryffindor numbers are dwindling? I suppose that's because you're all getting yourselves killed whilst _trying_ to be brave. I'll bet the Slytherin dormitories are practically bursting with people."

Hermione ignored him, trying not to think about the daily attacks on wizarding and muggle families.

"You're rather quiet tonight."

"That's because it's half past four in the morning."

"And you're not excited to see me? I'm disappointed."

Hermione didn't think he sounded disappointed.

"Tom I really think you should go back."

She picked up the book and held it out to him. He took it from her and started flicking through its pages, ignoring the warped face rising from the text.

"I don't want to. Not yet."

"Tom, this is dangerous. You need to go."

"No," he smirked, obviously trying to elicit a reaction from Hermione. "Besides, what good would it do you to have me gone? You'll just start dreaming about whatever you've been dreaming about again and you won't get any sleep anyway."

"This isn't about my sleeping habits," Hermione said in a hushed voice despite the silencing charm. "This is about time, and you're messing with it!"

"Oh hark who's talking! And I suppose your little visits into the past haven't affected the future at all, have they?"

"No, they haven't actually. But your last visit didn't do you any good. Professor Slughorn keeps looking at me like I'm an inferi or something."

"Ah yes, that old Slug..."

"Seriously Tom, you need to go!"

"No. I'll go in the morning. I'm going to stay."

"Tom!"

"What if you need somebody to cool you down if you have another nightmare? Or somebody to warm you up if you get too cold? Or someone if you get too lonely..."

"Tom!"

He was smirking. She didn't quite register why until she felt an overwhelming sense of tiredness.

"Tom, stop it," her words were stifled by a yawn.

"Hermione it's half past four, you should be in bed. Honestly, what am I going to do with you?"

She was too tired to respond to his mocking and instead decided to crawl back into bed. She faintly noticed Tom move her over to one side and climb in next to her, sitting with his back against the headboard and perusing the pages of a book he'd summoned from a stack next to her bedside table.

"Tom, don't go anywhere, don't cause any trouble..."

"You want me to stay with you?"

"Yeah..."

Tom smirked.

* * *

When she awoke the following morning, Hermione was furious to find Tom still with her. He had fallen asleep, slumped against the headboard with a book open on his chest.

"Get out of here this instant! I'm _really _angry, Tom! You can't just go into the future whenever you please and send people to sleep!"

Tom laughed loudly and Hermione's eyes widened in horror, praying that the silencing charm was still in effect. "Oh Hermione, when are you going to live a little?"

Hermione opened the book and tried to force him through it herself, fed up of him and his patronising ways. Tom grabbed her by her wrists and stopped her.

"Did you sleep well?"

Hermione stopped struggling with the book and Tom took it from her, smirking just one last time before he disappeared into its pages.

The book fell to the floor with a thud and Hermione didn't even notice.

She'd had three hours sleep but they had been the most restful three hours she'd had in a week.

This did not improve her mood in the slightest. In fact the fact that she'd slept well had made her, if possible, even angrier with Tom Riddle.

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** You guys make me ever so happy. This has officially been the best response to any fic I've ever written, so it just goes to show what no plan and a love for writing Tom can do. Thanks ever so much, as always, your reviews mean the world to me (and they're always plentiful in content too, and those kinds of reviews are the best kinds of reviews). Anyway, yay for Christmas break. This is the result of sitting in pyjamas today. There probably won't be a chapter up tomorrow, what with Twilight being released in the UK, amongst other things that will be keeping me busy, although if I stay up until the small hours I may be able to get something posted at stupid o'clock. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed writing it. I've been waiting to write this chapter for a while.

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

Deciding it would be unwise to leave it too long before she visited Tom again, lest he decided to come to her instead, Hermione went up to her dormitory a few days after Tom's last appearance and pulled the grizzly old book out from underneath her bed where it had stayed after she'd kicked it there following Tom's departure.

Her temper now abated, Hermione felt calm enough to be able to go back into the past and not hex Tom as soon as she saw him.

She waited until Lavender and Parvati were asleep (she had no hope of getting to sleep – annoyingly, her dreams were still plaguing her) and opened the book before disappearing into it.

Hermione escaped the book with a crash. She recognised the sound of tearing leather and smashing ink bottles immediately as she burst out of Tom's satchel. She didn't have time to navigate her fall well enough to avoid the broken glass of the ink bottle and yelped when her hand came into contact with a particularly sharp piece.

Moving carefully away from the glass, ink, broken bag and book, Hermione tried to stem the flow of blood with her wand. It took longer than it would have done normally; her hands were shaking and she was finding it difficult to concentrate.

Once the skin had healed over the cut, Hermione looked around at her surroundings. She was in a dark, barely lit room with no windows. There was a large desk with parchment, quills, and a number of grim looking artefacts stacked upon it. Tom's bag had been resting on a worn leather sofa but the rest of the room was taken up by odd looking objects. It wasn't the objects themselves that were odd, Hermione had seen paintings and jewellery and coat stands before, but the eerie aura that these objects gave off made Hermione feel incredibly uncomfortable.

With grim realisation, Hermione deduced that she was in the back room of Borgin and Burke's.

"Well, well," an oily voice which reminded her of Peeves said, "what do we have here? An imposter? A thief?"

"N-no," she stuttered. "I'm -"

"You're what?" he moved further into the room, his shuffling footsteps and considerable stoop made Hermione guess that he was remarkably old.

"I -" she didn't know what she could say. 'Hello I'm Hermione Granger, I'll be born in forty years time but I've just popped back to visit my friend Tom who works here' was certainly out of the question. How could she explain herself without giving anything away? And without getting herself killed, preferably.

"Hurry up, or I shall have to extract the truth from you myself!" his voice was sharp now and Hermione backed away slightly, despite knowing it would do her no good. The old man was blocking the only escape and she got the feeling that he would not waste time with a jelly legs jinx.

"No, look, I just -" she was stuttering worse than ever.

"I grow _impatient_."

"I'll just - go, shall I?"

The old man laughed. "I think not. _Cruci_-"

The spell hadn't even left his lips before he groaned. His wand dropped to the floor with a clatter that seemed far too loud for it. The old man followed its descent quickly, dropping to the floor, clutching at his chest.

Hermione rushed over and dropped to her knees beside him. "What's wrong?" she asked quickly, lighting her wand so she could see better. "What's wrong?"

He writhed for a few seconds more, clearly in agony and unable to communicate with Hermione. He became very still very suddenly and Hermione gasped. His eyes were open and glassy and she could see her own shocked expression reflected in them.

"Hermione," a quiet voice said.

Hermione almost screamed. She looked up and saw Tom standing in the doorway and then breathed a sigh of relief.

"The medi-wizards will be here in a moment, come away from him."

"Is he dead?"

"Yes."

Hermione didn't move and after a moment Tom walked forward, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet.

"Don't say anything," he murmured.

Before Hermione could question him there were several loud cracks and two medi-wizards had apparated into the shop and immediately moved over to the old man.

"What's his name?" one of the medi-wizards asked Tom.

"Burke. Caractacus Burke. I think he must have had a heart attack."

Hermione noted Tom's shocked expression which hadn't been there a moment ago. He was holding onto her hand. He got better at lying every time she saw him.

"Yeah, he's gone," the medi-wizard who was kneeling next to Burke had been checking him with his wand. He pulled something small out of his robes and enlarged it. It was a stretcher. He levitated Burke onto it and covered him with a thick purple blanket with the St Mungo's crest embroidered upon the centre of it.

"Can I ask how you know Mr Burke?"

"I work here," Tom replied. "He owns the shop with Mr Borgin. My name's Tom Riddle."

"And the lady?" the medi-wizard glanced towards Hermione.

"This is my girlfriend, she just came to meet me for lunch," Tom lied smoothly. The medi-wizard nodded.

"Right, well, that'll be all I suppose. You ready to go, Charlie?"

"Yeah, give us a hand with him, he's ruddy heavy."

The medi-wizards lifted the stretcher and disapparated with Burke.

"Well," said Tom after a short silence. "That went well."

"_Well?_" Hermione said, "what do you mean _well_? He _died_, Tom!"

"That _was_ the general idea. You don't really think I would have stood there and let him torture you, do you?"

Hermione choked on her next sentence. He'd _killed_ him for her? Tom led her out to the front of the shop and flicked his wand towards the door. It locked with a quiet click and the open sign twisted around to inform customers that the shop was now closed.

"You could have stunned him," she said finally in a quiet voice.

"What, so he could live to tell the tale?"

"Tom, they'll trace it back to you, they'll see that it was _Avada Kedavra_."

"You really don't think much of me at all, do you?" he smirked as he opened the till and started counting the galleons, depositing them into small leather pouches and putting them in the safe under the counter before he began counting the sickles.

"What d'you mean?"

"Well I'm not _stupid_, Hermione. I wouldn't use _Avada Kedavra _and then send a message to the healers telling them to come. It was a spell of my own invention."

"Your own?"

Tom nodded. "It causes a natural death. It picks the weakest area of the body and attacks it. In this case, it chose the heart and gave Burke a heart attack. Not surprising for a man of his age. There won't be any investigation. It's perfect."

Hermione thought she was going to be sick. "You invented that?"

"Let's go and get some lunch, shall we? You look _dreadful_."

* * *

Hermione picked at her food but ate very little of it. She wasn't particularly hungry; dinner had only been a few hours ago for her, plus the events of the past half an hour had stifled any appetite she might have built up since then.

"Why did you try and help him?" Tom asked. He took a sip of his pumpkin juice and set the goblet back on the table.

"Because he was _dying_, Tom."

"And the fact that he wouldn't have thought twice about killing you..."

"It doesn't matter. I was in his shop when I shouldn't have been. It was a drastic but not entirely unexpected reaction. Especially not when you consider the circles that he moves in."

"But you'd still help him?"

"What's so difficult to understand?" Hermione asked angrily, starting to lose her patience. "If someone's in pain, you help them, Tom. You don't just stand by and watch it happen, no matter what."

"You can tell you're in Gryffindor," he said after a pause, smirking ever so slightly.

"No Tom, you can tell _you're_ in Slytherin."

"I just saved your life!"

"By ending someone else's!"

"An eye for an eye..."

"Oh don't give me _that_."

"Hermione, calm down. He was a wretched old man who enjoyed things that would make you have worse nightmares than the ones you were having when I saw you last. He won't be missed. Borgin will be ecstatic, come to think of it. Burke's half of the shop will be transferred to him."

"Didn't Burke have any family?" Hermione frowned.

"No. Never married. Don't tell me you're surprised?"

"I thought the purebloods all got matched up with their cousins from birth?"

Tom laughed. "Not all. Most, but not all."

Hermione sighed.

"Eat."

She didn't have the energy to argue with him.

* * *

"So this is your flat?" Hermione looked around at the dingy room, not really knowing what to say.

"Well, bedsit, really," he glanced at Hermione and shook his head, laughing to himself.

"What?"

"You're trying to think of something polite to say about this hell hole. I know it's not much but it's a roof over my head and I don't really care that it's tiny and smells _awful_. I'm sure that'll wear off eventually."

"Yeah," Hermione said, "at least it's something," she paused, "you could have got somewhere nicer if you'd gone into a career in the Ministry."

Tom rolled his eyes and sat down on the bed. Hermione sat down next to him and noticed that the sheets were made of satin (green, of course). She raised an eyebrow at him.

"I like a comfortable bed. Is that a crime?"

Hermione smiled. "You could fix this up you know."

"I don't _care_. It's a thousand times better than the orphanage anyway. I've got my own room for a start. And there aren't any _children_."

Hermione pointed her wand at the floorboards and with a quick swish they were free of dust and polished almost to perfection. Tom sighed and lay back on the bed. Hermione then turned her wand on the curtains, fireplace and wallpaper, before she tackled the small kitchenette in the corner.

"All it takes is a few cleaning charms and a little bit of skill, Tom. You should have more pride in your home."

She didn't look at him but knew he had rolled his eyes at her.

"What do I end up doing with my life, Hermione?" he asked her, sitting up slightly and resting his weight on his elbows.

"You know I can't tell you."

"Do I do anything remarkable?"

"You won't do anything remarkable if you stay as a shop boy."

"Stop lecturing me, Hermione. Many people earn themselves good money when they open a shop."

"Yes but it's not _your_ shop. What would you like to do?"

Tom looked around for a short while and then sighed. "I'd like to do a lot of things. I want to be special."

"Special in what way?"

"I think you know what way. Or if you don't then evidently I stay as a shop boy for the rest of my life."

"You could always -"

"You're not about to meddle with time, are you Hermione? That would be _very _naughty."

Hermione ignored his smirk and lay back on the soft sheets next to him. "Enough. No more talk about the future."

"Do you dream about me, Hermione?"

"No."

"You're an awful liar."

She looked towards the fireplace, not wanting to meet his eyes. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to block out the mental image of Lord Voldemort, tried to separate him from the man lying next to her. "Stop talking, Tom. Don't talk about the future anymore."

"Yet here you are, so eager to get me out of my shop job. One would think you would be anxious for me to stay behind that till for the rest of eternity. You don't think the wizarding world is worth changing the future for?"

"What's done is done, Tom. You've chosen your path already."

"If you stayed with me, I doubt you'd let me follow that path."

Hermione turned her head so she could see him. "You want me to stay?"

Tom shrugged. "Your choice."

"Well it's out of the question, anyway. Messing with time, as I've said to you a thousand times before, is _dangerous_." Hermione tried not to think of the consequences of a world without Lord Voldemort. Harry wouldn't be an orphan, Neville's parents wouldn't be in St Mungo's, Dumbledore would still be alive, Sirius would still be alive, _hundreds_ of people would still be alive.

"You're still not sleeping are you?" Tom's finger gently brushed over the dark circles under her eyes.

"It doesn't matter."

"Is it night time for you?"

Hermione nodded.

"Stay here and sleep."

"Tom I can't, what if -"

"Tell them some rotten old Slytherin shoved you into the vanishing cabinet." He was smirking as he said it. He pulled back the covers of the bed and pointed his wand at Hermione. She felt herself rise a few inches in the air and move backwards towards the pillows.

"Tom! Put me down!"

"Just a minute. Patience is a virtue." He set her down on the mattress and shifted himself so he was sitting next to her. Tom pulled the duvet over them and summoned a book as he had done when he had stayed in Gryffindor tower a few nights previously. "I wonder if there's anyway I can synchronise this...then you could come and stay here at night and leave in the morning. That'd be useful."

Hermione watched him prod the pages with his wand, his brow furrowed as he worked. Her eyelids became heavier and heavier and soon she couldn't focus on him.

"Tom."

"Mmm?" he was concentrating on the book.

"I need to be up in five hours, okay? Don't let me stay too long. I'll miss my lessons."

"Yes, all right..."

If Hermione had been more awake she would have questioned whether he'd even registered what she had just said. As it was, she took his vague reply as confirmation that he would wake her up at the correct time and he would definitely not forget to do so.

If he did forget, there would be hell to pay.

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** You people make review heaven for me, for which I am very very grateful. Twilight was fantastic despite all the girls screaming every time Edward even blinked (phwoaaaaaaar Rob Pattinson) and it looks a hundred times better in HD than it does on pirate, hahah. That'll teach 'em to release it months apart. Anyway, this chapter was a little bit blocky, I wrote the next one before I wrote this so I'll post that tomorrow evening some time. Enjoy!

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

When Hermione awoke the following morning, Tom was still awake, his wand poking the book tiredly as he tried to uncover its secrets.

"What's the time?"

"Seven," Tom answered, not turning to look at her.

"Have you been up all night?"

"Yes."

Hermione yawned and pulled the duvet more tightly around her.

"Don't blame me if you fall back to sleep. As far as I'm concerned, you're awake now and my job as alarm clock has been fulfilled."

"You didn't wake me up though."

"You just switched me off so I wouldn't start buzzing when you were already awake."

Hermione laughed into the pillow. "What does your buzz sound like?"

Tom looked away from the book for the first time and frowned at her. He swished his wand and a loud, relentless buzzing filled the room.

"All right, all right, stop! I'm awake!" Hermione pulled the pillow over her head to block out the noise and Tom swished his wand once more. Silence fell and Hermione sighed in relief.

"Thought so."

* * *

In potions Hermione found her mind wandering as Slughorn went off on a tangent while explaining the properties of the Wolfsbane Potion. She had already thoroughly researched the potion when she had guessed about Lupin's condition in third year.

"Off you go then, and don't forget that for every clockwise stir you have to stir anti-clockwise twice afterwards. That's the biggest mistake most people make so try and keep that one in mind folks. Instructions are on the board."

The more advanced their magic became, the lazier the students got. Now they all just summoned their ingredients rather than actually getting up to get them. Hermione always went to choose her ingredients, earning herself snickers from the Slytherins who had decided that she was too thick to do a summoning charm.

"You may laugh, Mr Malfoy but Miss Granger's potions are always more successful than yours. If your ingredients aren't up to scratch then your end potion won't be either. Miss Granger is a natural potion maker and chooses the best of the selection available, you won't be laughing so much when she achieves an Outstanding in her NEWTs."

Hermione couldn't help but grin as she picked out her ingredients and walked back to her cauldron.

She was halfway through brewing her potion when her bag exploded loudly, causing the girls to shriek and the boys to push themselves backwards on their chairs away from the source of the noise. Hermione looked around in shock trying to find the source of the explosion. Her eyes landed on the book and she thought she could hazard a guess as to what had happened. She squinted at the floor trying to see some sign of movement but saw nothing. An invisible hand brushed against her leg.

She turned to Ron angrily. "I bet that was something your brothers invented!"

"Well don't blame me for it!" Ron retorted. "It's not my fault, I didn't put it in your bag!"

Hermione huffed and waved her wand at her bag which flew back together. She hurriedly packed her books back into it but stopped when she came across half of her transfiguration essay then saw the rest of the essay lying in tatters. "Oh for Merlin's sake!"

Hermione grabbed the rest of her belongings and left the dungeon angrily, making sure to throw the door open widely so Tom could follow her without having to open it again and causing suspicion.

"I would never have thought that you would have stormed out of a lesson," Tom whispered sounding mildly impressed.

"It's not the first time," Hermione replied. "I stormed out of divination in third year too."

"Divination isn't a _lesson_, it's a joke."

Hermione laughed and climbed the steps to the entrance hall hurriedly.

"Where are we going?"

"My dormitory. It'll be empty. I'll have to do something about the jinx on the stairs though."

"How do you know about that? People only usually find out when they've been up to no good..."

"My friends tried to come and talk to me. There was nothing untoward going on, Tom."

"No...there never is with you. Apart from popping back and forth in time so you can enjoy the company of a murderer."

Hermione pretended not to hear.

They arrived in the common room and Hermione frowned at the staircase as though the jinx was a personal insult.

"Honestly, you Gryffindors know nothing." Tom removed the disillusionment charm from himself and then turned his wand on the stairs. He mumbled something and then walked towards the staircase, climbing the steps without hesitation and without setting off the alarm.

"How did you do that? What's the spell?" Hermione asked curiously as she followed him.

"As if I would tell you. I don't want you getting up to anything naughty while I'm not around to join you."

Hermione frowned and pushed open the door to her dormitory. "What was so urgent that you couldn't wait for me to come to you?"

"I need to be here to do it anyway so this was unavoidable."

"To do what?"

"I've worked out how to synchronise us. So we move at the same rate. I need to do it from this end as well, it will have weakened by now."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. We just need to make the connection between us stronger, more defined. At the moment the book's connected to me but the only connection it has to you is that you've passed through its pages a few times." He grabbed Hermione's bag from her and pulled the book from it. He opened it and put it on the bed before getting his wand out of his robes and placing the tip of it in his palm. He grimaced slightly as he cut himself.

"Tom!"

"I need to do it," he said, clenching his fist until enough blood had gathered. He opened his hand and allowed it to drip onto the pages of the book. It was absorbed instantly. "You need to do it too."

"What?" Hermione backed away, holding her hands behind her back.

"It won't hurt, I promise. I'll put a numbing charm on your hand."

Hermione frowned but after a few seconds of hesitation she held out her hand.

Tom did as he had promised and numbed her hand before cutting it with his wand. He closed her hand into a fist and squeezed it, though Hermione could feel none of it. When he opened her hand again, a large amount of blood was pooled in her palm and Tom tipped her hand to let the blood fall onto the pages as his had done.

Once the blood had been absorbed Tom conjured a small vial and collected some of her blood. He then healed the cut with a quick flick of his wand and removed the numbing charm.

"Okay?" he asked.

Hermione nodded. "So is that it done now? In sync?"

"No, I need to put this into the book from my end," he shook the vial and the blood swirled thickly inside.

"So when I come tonight it'll be night time for you, too?"

"Hopefully. And when you come back it'll be tomorrow morning."

"Promise? I don't want to go missing for two weeks like you did."

Tom smirked. "If you do it'll only because you find my company so irresistible that you stay with me for two weeks and I couldn't blame you for feeling like that."

Hermione rolled her eyes and sat down on her bed. It was only when she looked at him properly that she realised that he had dark circles under his eyes. "Have you slept at all?"

"No, I've been working on the book," he collapsed onto the bed next to her and yawned.

"Did you go to work?"

"I'm ill. That's what Borgin will tell you anyway."

"You shouldn't ditch. Have you never heard of the boy who cried wolf?"

"Yes but if I actually get ill then I get more time off of work."

"Why don't you get a decent job then?"

"Snob."

"Lazy."

Tom yawned again.

"Are you going to fall asleep?" Hermione asked.

"Probably...is there a problem?" he sighed heavily and fidgeted slightly on the mattress.

"I'll put a disillusionment charm on you before I go. In case Lavender or Parvati come up."

Tom didn't reply and Hermione knew he was already asleep. She summoned her bag, taking care not to wake him and pulled the pieces of her transfiguration essay out.

It was lunchtime before she had the essay in one piece and looking suitably neat. She got up and tapped Tom softly on the head not wanting to wake him when she cast the disillusionment charm. He shivered in his sleep as the charm took effect and slowly began to blend in with the covers on Hermione's bed.

Hermione drew the curtains shut around her bed and left the dormitory, rushing down to lunch so Harry and Ron wouldn't get suspicious about her long absence.

* * *

"What was up with you earlier?" Ron demanded, still not happy that she'd taken her anger out on him. "There was no need to storm out of the lesson."

"It was just the final straw, Ron. I've been so stressed out and I haven't been sleeping well then my bag, of all the bags in this entire school, is the bag that explodes midway through the lesson. I cannot be _bothered_ with it anymore, I can't."

She was playing on the stress a _little_. She _was_ stressed, though. Lack of sleep coupled with exams and the past self of a homicidal maniac as one of your best friends was not a recipe for rest and relaxation.

"You didn't have to take it out on me," Ron replied grumpily.

"No, I shouldn't have, and I'm sorry." Hermione started eating her lunch rapidly and Ron seemed to accept her apology.

"Come on," Harry said eventually as the great hall began to clear, "let's go to transfiguration."

* * *

The sound of giggling echoed up the staircase outside the dormitory door. Hermione covered Tom's mouth with her hand, silencing him mid sentence.

"_Lavender and Parvati,_" she mouthed.

Tom covered her mouth with his own hand. Hermione frowned at him and ignored his smirk which she could feel against the skin of her palm.

"Hermione have you gone to bed already?"

Hermione's eyes widened and she tapped Tom sharply on the head with her wand, wishing the disillusionment charm would hurry up and take complete effect. Tom's other invisible hand which wasn't covering her mouth pushed her down on the bed so she was sprawled out, able to pass as someone who was fast asleep.

Hermione opened her eyes a little and saw the curtain twitch. Parvati was peeping through the gap.

"She's asleep, Lav. Hopefully she'll get rid of some of those bags under her eyes."

"And hopefully she'll _stay_ asleep. Then we might get a full night's sleep."

"Oh come on, Lav. Have some sympathy. Shall we go and ask Padma? She might be able to help."

The dormitory door closed quietly and Hermione heard them descend the stone steps back into the common room. She sighed in relief and sat up. Tom removed his disillusionment charm and it was only then that Hermione realised just how close he was to her.

"If you're pretending to sleep you need to breathe slower."

"I'm sorry my acting skills don't satisfy your standards," Hermione replied tersely.

"I'll make a decent liar out of you one way or another, Hermione. It's a very useful skill to have."

Hermione ignored him and laid down again. Tom laid down next to her and started fiddling with her hair.

"Shall we go to mine?"

"Not yet. Wait till it's dark."

"You want me to stay here in the future? Gosh, you _are _living life on the edge."

"If Lavender and Parvati come up and look in again they'll see a bunch of pillows under the duvet but if it's dark they'll just see _something_."

"So how are we going to pass the time?" Tom asked, trailing a finger down her arm.

Hermione shifted so she was facing him. "I don't know," she replied quietly.

"I have a few ideas."

"Such as?"

"I feel a..._practical_ demonstration would explain things more fully."

Hermione grinned, biting her lip slightly. Tom rested his hand on her face before he closed the gap between them.

The time passed very quickly and very enjoyably indeed.

* * *


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** You can all thank Jeff Buckley for this chapter. He is amazing in all ways. Thank you for all the reviews (over one hundred! I'm officially giddy!) and my sentiments of undying love will forever remain the same to all those that grace me with their thoughts after reading my chapters. Hope you've all been set free for Christmas and are enjoying yourselves (even if you don't celebrate Christmas I hope you're having a jolly good time too). There's about three or four more chapters to go with this, but hey, I might get carried away. I've only got an idea for three or four more chapters though and I've more or less worked out the ending...ish. Anyway, enough rambling, enjoy!

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

Hermione left her dormitory at eleven o'clock every night and when she arrived in Tom's flat it was just about to tick over to one minute past. Tom would wait for her on the sofa, the book laying open and waiting for her to make her appearance.

Despite everything he would do, Hermione couldn't help but be in awe of him. He had worked out how work a magical anomaly to his advantage. He had fine tuned time travel and Hermione wondered why on earth he would decide to turn to the dark arts when he could clearly make so many advances in modern magic.

They didn't often speak during the short while they stayed up. Hermione would be too tired and Tom would be engrossed in a book or else writing another article.

Conversation would begin once they were in bed and the lights were turned off. They would whisper in the dark and Hermione would close her eyes contentedly whenever she felt Tom's breath on the back of her neck.

"I owled Dumbledore this morning."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I asked about teaching in the new term."

"Good," Hermione reached for his hand which was resting on her waist and gave it a squeeze. "You'd be a good teacher."

"He said I was too young."

"Oh," Hermione felt an unexpected pang of disappointment. "Well you can always ask again in a few years."

"I'm not going to be a teacher though, am I?"

"Shush, Tom."

"No, Hermione -"

"Go to sleep."

He fell silent and Hermione's eyelids grew heavy.

* * *

"You're looking well."

Hermione looked up at Ginny. "Am I?"

"You've looked really ill for the past couple of months. You look good now."

"She's got a boyfriend," Lavender piped up.

"_Have_ you?" Ginny asked, leaning forward with interest.

"No!" Hermione replied, scowling at Lavender. "Who on Earth told you that?"

"Oh come _on_, Hermione. It's so _obvious_."

"How is it?"

"Well you're not waking up all the time, probably because you've got something nice to dream about now and you look happier and you're _much _less bossy."

Hermione frowned. "That doesn't mean I've got a boyfriend, that just means I'm sleeping better."

"Yeah, Lav," Ginny agreed. Her tone turned business like. "Your _evidence_ is inconclusive. Besides, we'd know about it if Hermione was seeing someone."

"Would you?" Hermione asked curiously, her eyebrows drawn together in a slight frown.

"Yeah, Ron'd be downright insufferable."

"What makes you think Ron would know?"

"I -" Ginny broke off. "_Are_ you seeing someone?"

"Don't be ridiculous Ginny. I can't afford to waste any time when the NEWTs are only six weeks away."

"Hermione, boyfriends are _not_ a waste of time," Lavender said in a tone which made it seem like Hermione had just told them that Crumple Horned Snorcacks _were_ real.

"Funny, because everyone who has a boyfriend seems to do nothing but complain about them."

Hermione got up from the table and stalked off to Charms.

"Can't argue with that," Ginny said, turning back to her lunch.

* * *

"Hermione."

"Go 'way," she moaned into the pillow.

"Slughorn won't mind you missing potions then?"

Hermione groaned.

"I know you'd rather stay here in my delightful company, but I have to go to work."

"Quit."

"How will I pay the rent?"

Hermione rolled over to look at him. "Get a permanent job at _Transfiguration Today_."

Tom seemed to consider this for a moment. "No. I wouldn't be able to write for _Cheeky Charms_ then and they pay quite well. I'd rather have a finger in both pies rather than just the one."

Hermione sighed. "If I get out of bed it's going to be really cold and I won't like it."

"Hermione Granger, time travel connoisseur defeated by the _cold_. Pathetic."

Hermione scowled. Tom yanked the duvet off of her and Hermione shrieked. Tom snuggled deeply into the duvet. "Tom!"

"I don't have to be at work until nine thirty. You have to be at breakfast at eight fifteen."

"Not for another fifty years," Hermione growled, trying and failing to pull the duvet back towards her. He had wound it so tightly around himself that she couldn't get a good grip on it.

"Oh you're going to stay then? Live with me and thoroughly mess up the time that you so desperately seek to preserve?"

Hermione sighed and got off of the bed, padding over to the desk where the book lay tatty and macabre with its dishevelled cover and suspicious dark stain running down the spine.

"Enjoy your day," Tom said, rolling over smugly and shifting on the bed to make himself more comfortable.

Hermione huffed and disappeared into the pages of the book, hoping that the noise of the book falling to the floor would disturb him as he was drifting back to sleep.

* * *

"I always forget how cold it is here," Hermione said, shivering as she made herself comfortable on the sofa. Tom summoned a jumper from the wardrobe and it fell into Hermione's lap. "Thanks," she said as she pulled it on. "I'm so used to it being spring. What date is it?"

"The thirtieth of December," he replied absently, his quill scratching away at the parchment he was writing his newest article on. He scribbled out a few lines and continued writing.

"Isn't tomorrow your...erm...?" she trailed off, not knowing how to approach the matter.

"What?" he looked up from the parchment before glancing down at it again and correcting something on it.

"Well, I _heard_ that New Year's eve is your birthday. I mean, I might be wrong, but I just heard it somewhere," she said in a rush.

"Where did you hear that?" Tom asked quietly, the grip on his article and the book he was leaning against loosening.

"Just...well...I looked you up, in all the old records at Hogwarts."

"You're lying."

He was right, but Hermione wouldn't tell him so. She wouldn't tell him that Harry had heard the tale in Dumbledore's memory about how Merope Gaunt had stumbled into the orphanage and gave birth to Tom on a chilly new year's eve.

"I'm not. I looked you up just after we first met."

"You already knew who I was."

"Tom does it matter?" she said exasperatedly.

"Why did you bring up my birthday?" Tom narrowed his eyes at her.

"Well, it's reason for celebration, don't you think?"

Tom turned his attention back to his article and didn't reply.

"Tom," Hermione prompted.

"I don't celebrate my birthday. It's a waste of time."

"_I_ don't think it's a waste of time."

"Well you celebrate it then. But leave me out of it."

"I'll come earlier tomorrow and we can go to dinner somewhere."

Tom grimaced.

"I won't take no for an answer, so don't even try and argue. Seven o'clock tomorrow."

Tom sighed and waved his wand at his article. A fresh copy appeared next to it minus all the scribblings and notes around the edges. He handed it to Hermione. "Check it through and I'll owl it before we go to bed."

Hermione read it speedily and handed it back to him.

"Good?"

"As always."

Tom smirked slightly then whistled. A small black owl fluttered over and waited patiently while Tom tied the article to its leg.

The owl flew up the chimney and out into the open air as Tom stood up and stretched.

"Bedtime?" Hermione asked.

Tom nodded and held out a hand to pull her to her feet.

* * *

When six forty-five arrived, Hermione frowned due to the realisation that she had nothing to wear to dinner. She knew it wouldn't be a big deal because Tom wouldn't want it to be, but she still felt as though she should make the effort. She definitely couldn't wear jeans, no trousers at all actually. She frantically searched through her trunk for her limited selection of dresses and found a red dress which was fairly plain in style and quickly altered it with her wand.

Before she left, Hermione pulled the curtains shut around her bed, shoved her pillows under the duvet to make a human shaped lump and blew out the candle on her bedside table. With her bag held in one hand, Hermione disappeared into the book, noting that the journey was much smoother since Tom had synchronised their times.

"You know they're going to stare if you turn up to dinner wearing those," Tom said, nodding towards Hermione's jeans.

"That's why I brought this with me," Hermione answered, holding her bag up. "I'll be five minutes."

She went into the bathroom and got changed quickly, adjusting the fit of the dress hurriedly so she didn't look like she was wearing a hand me down.

When she walked back out into the flat, Tom frowned at her.

"What?" she asked, even more self conscious than she had been when she had been checking her reflection in the bathroom mirror. "Have I got it completely wrong? I didn't even think about it until just before I left and I didn't have time to even go to the library and see if there were any books about forties fashion, you know, in the section where the Hufflepuff fourth years never seem to leave. Well, in my time, anyway."

"No, you look fine. Absolutely fine," he nodded. "You look good, actually."

"Was that a compliment?" Hermione couldn't hide the shock in her voice.

"I guess so," Tom said hesitantly.

"Oh, before I forget..." Hermione opened the bag that her clothes had been in and pulled out a white box. "I didn't have time to get you a present but I _did_ have time to ask the house elves if they'd make you a birthday cake."

Tom's face twitched. "You did _what_?"

"Birthday cake," Hermione said timidly. "I'll just – leave it here, shall I?" she placed it on the small counter next to the oven and then turned back to Tom.

He had made an effort to be presentable for dinner at least. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt and black tie tied loosely around his neck, the top button of his shirt undone so he didn't look like he should be driving a hearse.

"Where are we going?" Hermione asked as they stepped out of the front door.

"This was your idea, you're sorting it out."

Hermione tutted. "You know I don't know any restaurants around here."

"Excuses," Tom sighed as he took her hand and turned on the spot.

They appeared in front of a small muggle restaurant which was half full with cheerful customers.

"A muggle restaurant?"

"Unless you'd prefer the Leaky Cauldron..."

"No, I'm just surprised."

"Come on, let's get this over and done with." He pulled her into the restaurant and Hermione didn't like the way that the waitress's eyes lingered on his loosened collar when Tom asked for a table for two.

* * *

"Was that really so painful?"

"Yes. That god awful muggle waitress kept staring at me."

"Yes, I noticed," Hermione said tightly.

"Jealous?"

"No. She's not the one here with you, is she?" Hermione toed her shoes off and leant against the back of the sofa, her arms folded across her chest.

"She'll be dead by the time you're born anyway," Tom said matter-of-factly.

"Tom!"

"It's true, she will be."

Tom shrugged his jacket off and put it into the wardrobe. He approached Hermione and only stopped when he was an inch away from her.

"You are an awful person, you know," he murmured.

Hermione smirked and it felt strange on her face. "Why?"

"Because you made me go to a restaurant on new year's eve to celebrate my _birthday_," he said the word with an element of disgust, "and you didn't even get me a present."

"I brought you a birthday cake."

Tom closed his eyes and a brief smile crossed his face. "That's all irrelevant because I know exactly how you can make it up to me."

Hermione's breath hitched in her throat as he placed one hand on her waist, his fingers tracing invisible patterns onto the fabric of her dress. He moved closer and leant forward to kiss the pale skin of her neck. Hermione's eyes fluttered shut and she sagged against the back of the sofa.

Tom kissed her lips softly and Hermione brought her hand up to rest against his jaw. "You think this is a good way to make it up to me?"

"A very good way," Hermione breathed.

"That's what I thought."

Hermione let him lead her towards the bed and she sank down onto it softly, pulling Tom down with her. He prodded his wand at the lights and they switched off, immersing them in darkness. She fumbled with his tie and pulled it off of him, dropping it to the floor as Tom pushed her onto her back and covered her mouth with his own. Hermione gripped the sides of his shirt and wrapped one leg around him, desiring nothing more than to be as close to him as possible. She could taste the traces of chocolate from his dessert when he kissed her, and she sighed contentedly.

She gasped as Tom's lips travelled along her collar bone and then up her throat before returning to her lips once more. She pulled his shirt off of him, regretting the decision when he needed to break the kiss. Once he was kissing her again and her hands were trailing along his bare spine, following the dip and rise of his vertebrae, she realised it hadn't been a bad decision at all.

Tom's hand reached under her and Hermione arched her back so he could reach the zip of her dress more easily.

"You're not going to hex me in the morning, are you?" he asked breathlessly as he pulled her dress off of her.

Hermione shook her head and propped herself up on her elbows so she could kiss him again.

* * *


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:** You're all incredibly wonderful and I hope life is treating you all very good. Enjoy this and let me know what you think.

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

Hermione was glad when she was able to escape to the sanctuary of Tom's flat. Ginny was getting on her nerves, pointing out every single male student in sixth and seventh year and asking 'is he your boyfriend?'. Hermione had to try very hard to keep a hold on her temper and she was rather impressed that she had not blown up at Ginny yet.

She had started going to Tom earlier and earlier, citing revision as her main reason for disappearing up to her dormitory so early each evening.

Tom always greeted her with a smirk, his eyes glancing towards the clock as he noted the times at which she arrived.

"Either it's _really_ intolerable being in Gryffindor tower or you can't resist me. Which is it?"

"Neither," Hermione answered with a smug grin. She dragged the blanket off of the back of the sofa and wrapped it around herself, frowning at Tom's poor heating system. "Now, help me revise for arithmancy."

Tom started questioning her and wrote out passages of runes for her to read back to him in English.

"The cow...jumped over the moon...Tom! You're supposed to be helping me properly, not translating nursery rhymes."

Tom grinned and pulled the parchment back towards him, scrawling something else on the parchment, his writing painfully neat despite his speed. "What about this?"

"And yet by...heaven, is that heaven?"

"Yes, go on."

"And yet by heaven I think my love as rare, as any she...belies with false compare." Hermione raised her eyebrow. "Shakespeare?"

"I'm very well read, _thank you_." Tom took the parchment back and began writing something else.

"Yes but _Shakespeare_, Tom? You read Shakespeare?"

"He wrote some very interesting things. Lots of betrayals, lots of deaths, lots of awful, _awful_ jokes. He's something the muggles can be proud of," he chewed on the end of his quill for a moment, frowning at the parchment. He didn't notice Hermione's worried look.

There was a knock at the door.

"Who's that?" Hermione whispered.

Tom shrugged. He got up, started towards the door and then stopped. He pointed his wand at Hermione and she flinched. "I can't let people see you wearing those," he whispered in explanation, nodding towards her jeans. He waved his wand and the jeans became a deep blue skirt.

Hermione was mildly impressed and craned her neck so she could see the door as Tom moved to open it.

"Mrs Bennett!" his tone was charming and warm. "To what do I owe this pleasure? Come in!"

Hermione thought this was a bit much and watched curiously as a middle aged woman carrying a deep oven dish moved into the flat.

"Well you see, Tom, dear, my Lisa and her husband were supposed to be coming to dinner, only they've closed Porter Street so they had to turn back and go home. I thought it was a shame to let this go to waste so I thought I'd bring up for – ooh! Who's your lady friend?" she had noticed Hermione.

"This is my fiancée, Hermione," Tom said quickly. Hermione noticed him wave his wand behind his back so Mrs Bennett wouldn't notice. A ring materialised around her finger as Hermione got up to greet Mrs Bennett in the way that a dutiful future wife would.

"Hello, dear. Nice to meet you, I live downstairs."

"Oh right," Hermione said brightly. "Nice to meet you too."

"Hermione's a teacher in a school in the west end. She's just moved down and she's moved in a little early because there was no point in her renting a place for a few months and then moving in here after we're married."

Mrs Bennett's eyebrows shot halfway up her forehead.

"I can't wait till it's done. I think I'm just more anxious to have my bed back. That sofa isn't the most comfortable thing to sit on, sleeping on it is just...well," Tom shot a winning smile at Mrs Bennett and her scandalised expression dissolved. "Still, the things one will do for love."

"Oh, you're such a sweetheart, Tom," Mrs Bennett said fondly. "I'll set this down here, shall I?" she put the dish on the small wooden table near the window. "Don't let it go cold now, will you?"

"As if I would be able to deny myself your cooking for any longer than was absolutely necessary."

Mrs Bennett blushed at his compliment. "Well I'll leave you to it," she said kindly. "It was lovely meeting you, Hermione. You've got yourself a winner, here!"

Hermione smiled, keeping her mind firmly on the present. Tom's present. Not her own present.

Mrs Bennett tottered from the flat and Tom closed the door behind her, wishing her good night.

"Excellent," he said, rubbing his hands together as he approached the dish. "Her cooking is nearly as good as the house elves' at Hogwarts," he lifted the cover off of the dish. "Shepherd's pie. Get a couple of plates from the cupboard, will you?"

Hermione complied, waving her wand so she was wearing her jeans again then took two plates from the cupboard and grabbed some cutlery. "Does she do that often?"

"Fairly," Tom said, sitting down and tucking in. "Merlin, I didn't realise how hungry I was."

"She didn't seem impressed with our living arrangements," Hermione told him, starting on her own dinner with a little less haste than Tom. He had been right, it _was_ almost as good as Hogwarts' food.

"Well that's why I dropped in the bit about the sofa. Unless you want to get married then I'd best put a silencing charm on the flat."

"I think I'll pass on the marriage, thanks. Long distance relationships are one thing but this is a whole new level."

"Tut tut, Hermione. I never thought you'd be living in sin."

Hermione ignored him.

Tom smirked and continued eating.

* * *

"I've been working on Legilimency."

Hermione froze.

"I think I've got it. Just about. I still have to cast the spell properly but hopefully with a bit of practice I'll be able to do it wandless."

"Oh right," Hermione said in a choked voice. She didn't take her eyes off of her book.

"Let me see, Hermione. Let me see in your head."

"No Tom."

"Please?"

Hermione stood up. "I think I should go," she leant over him to grab the book, dreading going back to Gryffindor tower so soon after she'd left. Tom grabbed her wrist and whirled her round to meet his eyes.

"Don't g-" he stopped mid-word. He seemed to have frozen in shock, staring at Hermione. A flash of the Lord Voldemort she knew whipped through her mind, faces of people she'd known and lost during the war as well as Harry's face, Ron's face, and then that horrible pale, snakelike face.

Tom dropped her arm as though she'd burned him.

"No!"

"What?" she was confused.

"I won't turn into – I can't – that's just – I mean -"

It was the first time Hermione had ever seen him stumble over his words. The penny dropped after a moment and she realised what he had done. "You told me you couldn't do the spell without a wand."

"I _can't_."

Despite all the times she'd seen him lie, she believed him. He seemed too shocked to be able to lie, and she knew (hoped) he would never lie to her.

"So what was that, just then?"

"It was the same sort of feeling but I've never done it without a wand before...but it doesn't matter how I did it, what matters is that I'm going to become..._that_."

"You can't change the future, Tom," she told him firmly.

"_Yes I can!_"

"You shouldn't have seen that, Tom. You shouldn't have seen it."

"I _swear to you_ that I will never turn into..._him,_" he spat the last word as though it was a bad taste that he was trying to rid his mouth of.

Hermione looked down at him. His eyes were wide, honest and anxious. It was the first time she had ever seen him scared.

"Do looks matter all that much to you?" Hermione questioned, surprised that Tom would be so concerned about looking the way that he would eventually end up looking.

"He's not just ugly on the outside, Hermione."

"Yes but you're already on that path, Tom. You killed Myrtle, I know exactly why you got that book out of the library, I know how many lives you're going to destroy to get what you want!" her eyes were filling with tears and she tried to drag them back through her tear ducts, not wanting to cry in front of him. She ignored the twitch in his face at the mention of the book and its contents. "And you can't change it, Tom. You can't change it because it's already happening, _right now_."

"Stay with me and I won't do it," his voice was hard, certain, and it wasn't a proposition, it was an order.

"You know I can't, Tom!" Hermione hissed angrily. "I thought you were all eager for world domination!"

"I don't want to end up as a monster, what's the point of it? I can't believe you're here even though you know what I'm going to be."

"I tried to stay away," Hermione whispered. "You came looking for me."

Tom turned his attention to the window, his eyes unseeing as he looked out onto the dark street.

"It's probably best if I -"

"Don't go," he said sharply. "Not now. Stay."

Hermione withdrew her hand from the book and sat back on the sofa. Tom put his arm around her and pulled her close, holding onto her tightly. He continued looking out the window and eventually Hermione's eyes were unable to stay open. She snuggled deeper into his chest and her eyelids dropped.

When she awoke she was in his bed, her shoes placed neatly by the wall, her small earrings laying delicately on the bedside table. He was not laying next to her.

"Tom?" she whispered.

No reply.

Hermione frowned and pulled the duvet higher around her shoulders. A short while later she fell into troubled sleep, and when she woke again Tom was sitting on the bed next to her, a book open in his lap. She could tell by the way his eyes were fixed that he had not read a single word.

"Where were you?"

"I went for a walk. Go back to sleep."

"What's the time?"

"Late. I'll wake you when you need to go back to school."

Hermione took his dismissal and rolled over so her back was to him. A few minutes later she heard him set the book down. He laid down on his side and pulled her close to him.

"I'm sorry."

* * *

They didn't mention the Legilimency slip up again. Hermione knew it was playing on Tom's mind but he didn't ask her about the future anymore, and for that she was relieved.

She kept her head down when she was at Hogwarts, causing Harry and Ron to start worrying about her reclusive behaviour and Ginny to become more suspicious about her secret liaisons with her top secret boyfriend.

If only Ginny knew that the man on her mind was the same man who had spent so much time _in_ Ginny's mind in her first year. Then she wouldn't be so curious or excited; she would be disgusted and revolted. She would be terrified, she would suspect that Hermione was being possessed, she would tell Harry and Ron. Hermione felt faint whenever she thought about them finding out.

"The exams are only two weeks away!" she shrieked whenever anyone questioned her erratic behaviour. This seemed to satisfy any worry or curiosity amongst her friends and she was glad because Tom was right, she was a terrible liar. It helped a great deal that they had all finally started revising as well, and so other people's problems would take a back seat whilst they tried to memorise the twelve uses of dragon's blood.

Harry frowned at her sometimes when he thought she wasn't looking, but she noticed, and after a while he'd shake it off and continue with his work. His regular observation was making Hermione more paranoid by the day. Sometimes she wondered if he could see the word 'traitor' written across her forehead, but then she told herself that she was being silly (only after she had glanced at her reflection in the window to check).

* * *

"Are you sure the silencing charm works?" she breathed as she tugged his shirt off of him.

"Absolutely," Tom answered in between kisses on her neck. "They won't hear a thing."

She found that she registered odd things, such as how soft his hair was between her fingers and how recently he had shaved. She also noticed that it was the only time he was ever warm, and the rest of the time he was completely cool from head to toe.

"Are you _sure_?"

"Yes, now for the sake of my sanity _stop_ talking."

Hermione's worries disappeared and she lost herself in his kisses and his touch, constantly gripping him close to her, not wanting even a millimetre of space between them.

* * *

"I never noticed you wearing that before," he was fiddling with the engagement ring he'd conjured when she had met Mrs Bennett, which was resting on her chest, a fine silver chain looped through it.

"I guess I'm sentimental," Hermione replied, touching his hand softly.

Tom kissed her shoulder and Hermione sighed happily.

When she was with Tom, she even let her upcoming NEWTs slip her mind, and that was definitely saying something.

* * *


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:** Thanks for all the lovely reviews. I'm sorry if this has any typos, I've been proof-reading as I've been writing but I haven't given it my final once over yet as I'm about to go out and get my friend for a midnight get together (how exciting). I wanted to post this up tonight so any errors you'll have to excuse. Let me know what you think, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. =]

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

"He wants me out of the way, for good. Soon."

"He's always wanted you out of the way, to be fair, mate," Ron said, hiding his worry behind his humour.

Hermione remained silent.

"I've got a feeling he's planning something. It's quiet at the moment, it's really quiet," Harry was staring into space, a slight frown perched on his eyebrows. Ginny sat down next to him and he jumped.

"Come on, we'd best get to Charms. Professor Flitwick's recapping disillusionment charms, he thinks they might come up in the exams," Hermione knew full well that she would need no practice on her own charm, having performed it more times in the last year than she cared to remember.

"Yeah, let's go," Ron agreed, "I still get an outline when I cast my charms, I need some more practice."

They set off to Charms, Harry still locked in a quiet, pensive mood while Ron chattered away about the Chudley Cannons.

"I think they've got a real chance this year, I really do."

Harry snorted. "Yeah, they're gonna win the league on the same day that Voldemort decides that he wants to open a bakery in Paris."

"Paris is very nice," Hermione said reasonably, before giggling softly.

"And I've heard that You-Know-Who's a very keen baker," Ron added. "Don't make any judgement yet, there's a couple of weeks to go and I know they're third but they're only four points behind the Tornadoes and seven points behind the Harpies. If they win the next three games and the Harpies lose theirs – don't forget they've got to play the Ghouls, and they're on top form at the moment, and the Tornadoes could still win one of their games and we'd -"

His babble came to a halt when they walked into the Charms classroom, for which Hermione was very glad. She'd been on the receiving end of several boring conversations in her life, but Ron's quidditch points analysis beat all the others hands down.

* * *

She would remember the moment for the rest of her life. The shock and the dread engulfing her in a suffocating tidal wave of emotion. She would remember how her eyes followed him, not daring to look towards her friends, and she would remember not being able to understand a word he was saying, for the shock was so great that her brain had turned into something which felt like wet cake.

She didn't even register the pain when her bag burst open, although a large bruise would later form on her leg from where Tom had tumbled into her, knocking her into the wall.

"I know how to do it," he said, though the words meant nothing to Hermione. "I've figured it out, because clearly I don't evolve like that _naturally_, so it must mean that I end up...inconvenienced, if you will, and then have to make myself solid again, but if I take just a few precautionary measu- what?" Tom was holding onto Hermione's shoulders, steadying her as she wobbled slightly, on the verge of fainting. He then turned to see Harry and Ron, their wands raised at him, deathly looks on their faces.

"Let her go," Harry growled.

Tom frowned and dropped his arms. Neither Harry nor Ron's wand lowered. "Is an attempt about to be made on my life? How exciting!"

Hermione's brain seemed to reform itself into a mass of nerves and thought and she hit Tom lightly on the arm, clearly getting her 'don't make them angry' point across. "Lower your wands," she told them, calmly and firmly.

"Fat chance," Ron spat. "Get out of the way."

Hermione moved in front of Tom, shielding him. "No, you can't, you don't understand, just let me explain."

"You can explain _after_, now move!"

"No! Ron, just listen, for goodness' sake!"

"I agree with the redhead," Tom said coolly. "It will do you no good to be standing between myself and an angry...well, I would like to say mob, it sounds more exciting, but I suppose there's not really enough of them to be a _mob_," he shifted Hermione gently to the side. "Now, what Hermione is taking so long to explain is that I am not from this time, and any action you do take will have drastic consequences on our time line."

"What?" Harry asked. "What d'you mean you're not from this time?"

"I'm from the past."

"Yeah, a bit like what you said when I wrote to you in that diary of yours. Didn't stop you coming here and trying to mess things up, though, did it?"

Tom's face lit up. "Oh the diary! You found out about that, did you? All by yourself?" his tone seemed slightly concerned, as though Harry wasn't quite mentally stable.

Hermione got engulfed by the tidal wave of dread again.

"_Yeah, a bit like what you said when I wrote to you in that diary of yours."_

"_At the moment the book's connected to me."_

"_It's _my_ book."_

_The screaming face trying to pull itself from the pages, like a desperate lost soul. Or piece of soul. _

"Hermione will go ballistic, I'm telling you. She's all for keeping time the same. Can't tell me about it enough actually."

"Yeah but we can solve this problem at the root, wipe out the cause," Harry sounded uncertain and Hermione brought herself back to the conversation.

"Time _will_ compensate, I can assure you. And what if it compensates by throwing someone else in my place? Someone worse?"

"Impossible," Ron retorted. "There's no one worse than you."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," Tom smirked. "Anyway, I'll just get back home before either of you two decide to send a tickling hex at me," he leant down and grabbed the book from the floor. "Hermione, I'll see you in a short while, yes?"

"I'm coming with you now," she said shakily.

The shouting of Harry and Ron – accusations of Tom confunding her, slights on her sanity and several words that she would reprimand them for using normally – were blocked out by the scream of 'coward!' inside her own head. Coward, because she didn't want to be alone with Harry and Ron, coward because she didn't want to explain why Tom was so civil to her, so protective of her (her heart had jumped a little when he'd moved her out of the aim of Harry and Ron's wands) and coward because she couldn't stand the thought of Harry and Ron taking the book from her before she'd had a chance to go back to him one last time. Tom wouldn't let them stop her, not if she went with them now.

Tom waved his hand and bars made of electric blue light encircled Harry and Ron like a cage. He had never done wandless magic in front of her before, apart from the Legilimency incident which Hermione refused to acknowledge had ever taken place.

"What have you done?" Hermione demanded, her voice panicky and stressed.

"It's just to stop them chasing after us," Tom told her. "I'll tell you the counter curse before you return and you can lift it when you get back. Providing you're coming back, are you coming back?"

"She better come back!" Ron growled, stepping forward. He yelled as his arm came into contact with the cage.

"Oh yes, I'd stay away from the edge if I were you," Tom told him, frowning in mock concern. "Are you coming back, Hermione?"

Hermione seriously considered saying no, but that would be one cowardly act too many. It would be selfish and it would be wrong, not to mention the havoc it would cause on the time line. "Yes of course I'm coming back," she said softly.

"Very well."

"Tom you know I have to."

"What's the date?"

"What?" Hermione was shocked by the sudden change in topic.

"What's the date? It's important."

"I can't tell you, Tom."

"Tell me or -"

"Or what?" Hermione demanded, anger replacing the fear and shock that had been settled in her body for some time now, "or you'll kill my friends? You'll kill me?"

"Or I'll summon a copy of the _Daily Prophet_, you silly little thing," he touched her nose gently with his index finger, smiling indulgently at her as though she were a mischievous child. "Now, which'll it be?"

Hermione opened her mouth but said nothing.

"Tick tock, Hermione. Time's running out," his wand was in the air, poised to cast the summoning charm.

"Third of June," she said in a hurry. There was no point in wasting time as a newspaper flew halfway across the castle.

"And the year?"

Hermione paused. "Ninety-eight."

"Ninety-eight?" Tom repeated, sounding impressed. "Goodness, you are further away than I thought."

"Why d'you want to know the date?" Harry demanded.

"Because, my dear boy -"

Harry grimaced.

"- today will be a day that will go down in history as the day that Hogwarts became the sole property of Tom Marvolo Riddle. You'd best get your dancing shoes on, I expect I'll be here soon."

"Tom don't," Hermione choked out. "Don't – you can't, just leave the school, please, everyone here's innocent, please don't do this."

"Come on," he said, putting an arm around her shoulder and leading her away, "we'll talk about it at home."

"Home?" Ron scoffed, "what are you talking about, _home_?"

"My fiancée and I live together in a small flat in London," Tom answered, whirling around. He dipped a cool finger down the neck of Hermione's robes and pulled the ring out so it was showing. "This is her engagement ring, I think I have good taste, don't you?"

Ron's face had turned from an angry blotchy red to a drained and sickly grey in less than a second. "Engaged? Hermione, you can't be serious, he's -"

"It's not serious," Hermione told him. "It's just a stupid charade, it's not – I mean, we're not actually..."

"But that's not to say that we're not together," Tom continued with a smirk.

"You're lying," Ron said through gritted teeth. "Hermione wouldn't – she wouldn't do that – not voluntarily. What have you done to her?"

"Several things," Tom retorted, his smirk more curved and arrogant than ever, "but a gentleman would never say."

Hermione felt herself wither inside at those words. He was doing nothing to help her, nothing at all. He was just making it worse. She was now considering staying with him even more than she had before so she wouldn't have to deal with the consequences. She realised bitterly that that was probably what he was trying to do. Trying to make his place seem like the best option forever.

Harry was looking at her oddly. He didn't look angry, he just looked sad, slightly betrayed and the worst of it was was that he didn't look all that surprised.

"At least we know why you've been acting so strangely," he said with a sigh, sitting down on the floor, careful not to touch the edges of the cage.

"Is that it?" Ron asked, "is that all you've got to say? Harry, he's done something to her! Like he did to Ginny!"

"Hermione, I'm tired of his wailing, shall we?" Tom offered her his arm after he had scooped the book off of the floor. Hermione didn't take his arm and instead walked ahead of him, not looking back.

* * *

"You had to go and make it worse, didn't you?" she yelled angrily, shoving him in the chest. "I told you not to come into my time and that is exactly why! D'you think they'll ever let me use it again? D'you think I'll ever be able to come back, now? No! I won't! You didn't even cast a stupid disillusionment charm on yourself! What were you _thinking_?"

"But I know how I can stop it!" he said urgently, stepping forward, "I've been doing loads of research. If I keep the essence of myself then I will be able to use it to regenerate. I mean, I don't know how I'll do that, but I can keep the essence of myself right here right now and incorporate that so I won't turn into him."

"The book's a horcrux, isn't it?" she said flatly, ignoring his excitement at the prospect of not being the Voldemort that Hermione knew and detested.

His face fell.

"Well?"

"Yes. But you said the diary got destroyed, and now you're going to destroy the book, aren't you? I need to make another one."

"Tom I'm not going to destroy it. I don't think I could. Harry and Ron will though, and I'll let them. This isn't healthy. We need to stop this. Besides, it won't get destroyed until my time, and that's a long time away. You're still alive so you won't need it."

"You know all about my horcruxes?"

"Yeah. Don't go too far."

"How far is too far? Don't say one because that's not what I want to hear and you know it."

"Stop now. Leave it. End of."

"You're changing time."

"So are you."

"Anything else you'd like to change while you're feeling reckless?" he smirked just a little, though his heart wasn't in it.

Hermione battled with herself. What was the point of all this if she couldn't save anyone? What was the point of being able to ask Tom for something if she wasn't allowed to ask for anything? It would be worthwhile if she could just save someone...if someone got a reprieve...

"Bellatrix Lestrange. Or Bellatrix Black, I don't know if she's married when you meet her. But just..."

"Dispose of her?"

He was offering to kill her. Offering to kill the woman who in many ways was far crueller than he was. She didn't know if she could make that decision, to end someone's life, indirectly or not, even if it was someone who was poisonous to the human population.

"We need to put the book back."

Tom grinned then tossed a travelling cloak to her and she put it on. "Let's break into Hogwarts."

Dread filled Hermione once again.

* * *


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:** Sorry it's been a while. Hope you all enjoyed Christmas (if you celebrate it, if not, then I hope you had a jolly nice time anyway). One chapter after this, and possibly an epilogue, but I promise nothing. I know the content of the last chapter but I don't know how I want to leave things with Tom and Hermione. It's a puzzle and hopefully I'll solve it over the next few days. This should be finished by New Year. Completely. Hope you enjoy this chapter, let me know what you think. =]

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

Tom took Hermione by the hand and turned on the spot. The only thing she could feel other than the suffocating darkness was his cool hand gripping onto her own. Soon she was able to breathe again and saw that they were standing at the gates to Hogwarts.

"We're just going to walk straight in?"

"It's the only way in," Tom replied.

Hermione shook her head, took his hand and apparated the pair of them away from the castle.

"Hogsmeade?" Tom said, his lip curling a little, "what good is Hogsmeade?"

"There's a secret passage," she told him, heading up towards Dervish and Banges. She agreed she was stupid for landing herself in this mess, but she was not so stupid that she would show Lord Voldemort a way he could use to get into the school in her own time. When studying the Marauder's Map she had often wondered where the caved-in passageway behind the mirror had come out, and judging by the direction of the other paths, it was somewhere near Dervish and Banges.

Tom followed Hermione curiously, although Hermione could sense his annoyance that she knew more about the secrets of Hogwarts than he did.

"I've never used this one before," she told him. "I think it comes out somewhere around here, but have no idea where," she pulled her wand out of her pocket as they reached the back street where the shop, which was crumbling and worn during Hermione's time, stood proudly with gleaming window displays. "_Specalis Revealio_," she whispered. She held her breath a the spell took effect, searching the surrounding area for all charms, spells, curses and hexes. There were the usual security charms on the shop and the houses nearby and somebody had silenced a large cat nearby. Hermione was just about to give up when an unfamiliar spell was revealed to her.

Hermione followed the trail, a slight frown perched on her eyebrows. Tom followed her quietly, his wand out and ready, the book tucked safely under his arm.

"It's in their garden," she hissed, pointing towards a high fence which blocked their path.

Tom nodded, grabbed her by the arm, muttered something under his breath before leaping into the air, pulling Hermione with him. Her scream never left her throat and Tom held onto her as he landed gracefully, knowing she would be a mess of clumsy limbs.

"I've been experimenting with unaided flight," he told her quietly.

Hermione's eyes widened.

"Well I have to fill the days with something, Hermione. My life doesn't revolve solely around you."

"Never do that again," she said, "not without warning me, at least."

Tom smirked and Hermione turned her attention back to the passageway.

A large ornate bird bath was sitting in the middle of the garden. An enormous stone phoenix sat on a plinth on top of it, its wings spread and its head pointing towards the sky. Stagnant water with a thick blanket of algae filled the basin around the phoenix. Hermione wrinkled her nose and hoped they wouldn't have to come into contact with the water.

"Stacius," she whispered, her revealing charm informing her of the incantation.

The phoenix turned its head to look at her and Hermione jumped back a little, unused to the entrances of the passageways being animate. It started to flap its large stone wings and tore itself from the bird bath, Hermione looking around anxiously, desperately hoping the noise had not woken anybody.

Now that the bird had moved, Hermione could see a hole which was roughly a metre in diameter, just about big enough for a person to squeeze through.

"I wonder how long the drop is," Hermione said, looking to Tom.

"I'll go first," he clambered onto the edge of the bird bath and then carefully stepped across the water to the plinth in the middle. He peered down cautiously. "See you in a second," he said, before he jumped down gracefully, leaving Hermione alone with the stone phoenix, which was still flapping its wings noisily above her.

"It's all right," his voice echoed up through the tunnel, "it's not far at all. Just don't forget to bend your knees when you land if you want your legs to stay unbroken."

Hermione took a lot longer the get onto the plinth than Tom had, slipping slightly on a wet patch of stone and almost falling into the stagnant water. She held her breath before she jumped. She had no idea why; there would still be oxygen down there, it wasn't like she was jumping into the ocean, but she held her breath nonetheless.

Tom caught her as she landed, steadying her so she didn't lose her balance on the uneven ground. He had already conjured a lantern to guide them along the tunnel and after a few seconds there was a loud crunch as the phoenix returned to its usual position.

The walk seemed to take forever. They barely spoke. In Hermione's case it was mostly because she was too busy concentrating on not falling over the rocky path. She also hadn't forgotten how Tom had gone out of his way to make things difficult for her return to her own time.

Possible scenarios flitted through her head as she walked. What would Ron do when he saw her? What would Harry do? She knew the words 'he killed my parents' would crop up somewhere once she had returned, as well as 'how could you?' and 'what were you thinking?'. Did they think that she had thrown her lot in with Voldemort? Did they think she was Wormtail all over again? The friend that betrayed them all?

"We're going up," Tom noted as the path became steeper. "We must be nearly there."

Soon Hermione saw the wooden back of the mirror which would be their entrance into Hogwarts. Tom pushed it and it swung upwards, permitting them to leave the claustrophobic tunnel and step out into the comparatively huge corridor.

"Library," Hermione said quietly.

Tom nodded and they started making their way to the nearest staircase.

* * *

The musty smell of the books comforted Hermione. The smell of the polish on the wood, the staleness of the air and the motes of dust which shone in the light of the lantern, all of it made it feel like home.

Tom locked the door with his wand.

Hermione turned to look at him.

"So we aren't interrupted. I don't want any unnecessary questions. And Dumbledore would poke his stupid crooked nose in as well."

Hermione felt heat seep through her body at his casual insult of her old headmaster. "Dumbledore's a better man than you could ever be," she hissed.

"Ouch," Tom replied sarcastically, trailing his finger over the spines of the books. "That really hurt, Hermione."

"Let's just get this over with, shall we?" she opened the book but Tom grabbed her wrist.

"Don't leave it like this."

"Why shouldn't I? Do you even know what it feels like to have your friends looking at you like you're the worst thing that's ever happened to them? Of course you don't, you don't have any friends, you're 'too good' for friends, but let me tell you, you just made my already difficult life a hell of a lot harder. I won't be surprised if they hex me the second I return so tell me the counter charm to that damn cage and let me go!"

"Don't assume I don't know what it feels like," Tom said, his grip on her wrist not loosening. "That's the way you're looking at me now, that's what you're telling me now, that I've ruined your life, no wonder the future me is so...bitter."

"Bitter? _Bitter_?" Hermione laughed sarcastically, "Tom, he's not bitter, he's _insane_. He's a murderous bastard and I don't think it's because his _fiancée_ called the wedding off!" she ripped the chain from her neck and threw it at him. The ring slipped from it and fell to the floor where it spun for a few seconds before falling flat.

Tom bent down and picked it up. He slipped it into Hermione's pocket along with the chain and she huffed.

"They _did_ want to kill me."

"So you decided to punish me for it?"

"I think the look on the redhead's face was _quite_ priceless."

"Oh so it's worth messing things up for me if you get a satisfactory reaction? Is that it?"

"Hermione..."

"What? What do you want? A declaration of love? A goodbye kiss? D'you want me to tell you how _dreadfully_ I'll miss you?" she could feel the blood rising in her face as she spoke, her anger building and building with every inept response he came up with.

"I don't want you to leave here hating me. I want to end this well, so I've got something good to remember, not something to regret."

Hermione didn't reply. She folded her arms over her chest and let her eyes travel over the books on the higher shelves, avoiding his eyes.

He touched her face gently but she didn't acknowledge the contact.

"What's the counter charm?" she asked softly, her eyes set on a book on the topmost shelf.

"_Flagia Iradis_," he said, dropping his hand from her face.

"Right, now if you'll excuse me," she started to move towards the book but Tom blocked her way. "Let me go, Tom."

Tom shook his head.

"Tom I just want to go home. Let me go home and sort this mess out."

He didn't let her pass. Instead he leaned forward and kissed her softly on the lips. "Don't leave it like this," he kissed her again and Hermione pushed her hands against his chest to try and stop him but when he kissed her for the third time, she found herself unable to protest as his lips moved softly against her own.

She brought an arm up to wrap it around his neck, pulling him closer to her. He pushed her back into the bookshelf as he deepened the kiss and it wobbled dangerously, though neither of them noticed.

"Tom, I need to go," she breathed as he kissed her neck. His fingers pulled at her cloak and it fell to the floor in a pool of dark material.

"Not yet. I'm not going to see you for fifty years, just stay a little longer."

"But Harry and Ron -"

"Can wait."

"But Tom, the cage."

"They know not to touch it. It's not fatal anyway. For once in your life be selfish, Hermione."

"You've already made me selfish, Tom. You bring out the worst in me," she gasped lightly as his hands slipped under her top to rest on her waist, his fingers moving softly against her skin.

"Then I consider my job done," he murmured against the skin of her neck. "Curiously, I think you bring out what some people might declare to be the best in me. How glorious."

"What do you declare to be the best in you?" Hermione asked, pulling herself away from him slightly.

"Must you continue to talk?" he pulled her back towards him.

"You don't consider conversation with me to be important?"

"Not right now. Not at this particular moment."

Hermione opened her mouth to respond.

"Don't make me put a silencing charm on you. I'll be dreadfully disappointed when I don't hear you calling out my name," he was smirking.

"Tom we can't, not here, it's the library!"

"And what place more apt for the tragic and romantic goodbye between the two best students Hogwarts has ever seen – and don't you _dare_ mention Dumbledore because that would _definitely_ kill the mood."

"But what if -"

"I locked the door. And do you honestly think I would have let you do all that shouting unless there was a silencing charm around us?"

Hermione looked at him for a long moment before Tom rolled his eyes and kissed her, pinning her to the bookshelf, his hands working hard to try and relieve her of her clothes.

The last coherent thought that Hermione had for a good while was of how much she hated his ability to clear her mind of all important things.

* * *

"I'll be there when you get back."

"That's comforting," she snorted as she pulled on her shoes.

"I told you I wouldn't become him. I swore to you."

"Yeah well forgive me if I take that with a pinch of salt."

"You're holding things against me that I haven't even done yet."

"You will, though."

"I promise I won't kill any of the students."

"Families?"

"Will families be there?"

"I imagine Harry and Ron have told people that you're planning an attack."

"Fine, no families either."

"No teachers."

"How about I never kill a single person in my entire life?" Tom said with a dramatic sigh and obvious sarcasm.

"Bit too late for that, isn't it?"

"Coming from the girl who asked me not even two hours ago to kill Bellatrix Black?"

"I didn't ask you to kill her, you were the one that suggested murder."

"You didn't protest. Tell me, what will she do?"

His curiosity sickened Hermione and she turned away from him.

Tom sighed. "I'm sorry about earlier, okay? I'm sorry."

"Sorry's just a word. In fact it's a joke when it comes from you," she tied her hair back into a ponytail and Tom frowned.

"What can I say? I _am_ sorry yet when I tell you you don't believe me. You despise me for what you believe I will be, but when I say I won't turn into him you don't believe me. How can I promise you anything when you're judging my character to be the same as that madman in your head?"

"Do you think he's mad or do you think he's a genius?"

"I think he's gone too far, that's what I think," said Tom. "I've learned from my own mistakes before I've even made them. It's going to be all right."

"You've still made horcruxes though."

"How else am I going to be alive when you get back?"

Hermione huffed again and grabbed the book.

"Hermione, no matter whether you're here or there, I'm going to be around. I said I was sorry, accept the apology and we can go back to normal."

"_Normal_? Is there any such thing as _normal_ when it comes to this?" she gestured at the space between them with the book.

"What's not normal? Boy meets girl with half a brain and grows rather fond of her. That seems quite normal to me."

Hermione sighed. "And what about the fifty year age gap? And the fact that you're a murderer with aspirations of world domination?"

"Even murderers are allowed a little pleasure other than bloodshed."

Hermione didn't laugh. "Bye Tom," she said quickly, and she opened the book.

He caught her lips in a last kiss before she was sucked into the pages of the book and Hermione felt an overwhelming sense of loss engulf her as she travelled through the pages of time.

* * *


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N:** This was officially the hardest thing I've ever had to write. I tried writing this chapter yesterday but scrapped the lot because it was so awful. Thankfully I was struck by inspiration at a New Year's gathering and started writing as soon as I got home. I'm still not one hundred per cent happy, but it's better than the rubbish I wrote yesterday so I think this is the best it'll get. Just the epilogue after this, and that'll be that. I've started something new as well, (not that I'm shamelessly plugging or anything, I would never do such a thing). It's a Hermione/Cedric story called Eclairs and that's going to be my main project after this. Anyway, hope you're all enjoying the new year. Let me know what you think of this chapter, it's always wonderful to hear from you. =]

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

"Tell me what happened," Harry said quietly, pulling a chair over so he was sitting down opposite her.

"No," Hermione replied firmly, "you'll hate me."

"I promise you I won't be angry," Harry told her. "I know what he's like."

"You don't though Harry. You only know what the worst part of him's like."

"So tell me what he's really like then."

Hermione sighed. "He saved my life a couple of times," she told him. "I came out of the book one day in the back of Borgin and Burke's and Tom wasn't there. Burke was going to torture me because he thought I was a thief or something but Tom killed him just as he was about to cast the spell. He knows I'm muggleborn, Harry. Why would he bother?"

Harry remained silent.

"So he killed someone, what's new?" Ron said. "It doesn't make him a good person just because he killed someone bad."

"Ron you've got no idea. You've never seen him get excited over a decent meal and you've never seen him write article after article for _Cheeky Charms_ just so he could pay the rent on his grotty little flat. You've never seen him with bags under his eyes after he's been reading all night, and you've never seen him wake up in the middle of the night completely confused because his brain's not working." Hermione sighed. "You know when I was sleeping badly?"

Harry nodded.

"I was having bad dreams. Tom ended up staying one night, that day I stormed out of Potions, remember? Well he stayed and I was fine. So I started sleeping in his flat at night and I was sleeping better and he'd stay next to me just so I'd sleep well. He's not as bad as you think he is. Or wasn't, I should say."

"I guess not," Harry said quietly.

"How can you be so fine with this? Clearly he's gone and confunded -"

"Oh Ron for Merlin's sake!" Hermione snapped. "I have not been confunded!"

"Ron it was her own choice. She's free to make her own choices, isn't she?"

"Yeah but with him? Harry, he killed your parents!"

"I hadn't forgotten, Ron," Harry said sharply.

"I thought you'd be a lot angrier," Hermione admitted, looking worriedly at Harry. "I know it was a stupid thing to do but -"

"Dumbledore said not to judge you. He said a foolish mistake can often be the key."

"What?" Hermione breathed. "Dumbledore -"

"When I went for my lessons last year," Harry explained. "He said not to judge you. He said you're an uncommonly good person and nothing could ever sway you. To be honest I'm quite relieved. I thought it'd be worse than this."

"Relieved?" Ron said indignantly. "How can you be relieved? She's been messing around with You-Know-Who!"

"His name's Tom," Hermione retorted before returning her attention to Harry. "Dumbledore must have realised. He only saw me once. I burst out of Tom's bag in the middle of his Transfiguration lesson and Dumbledore was there. Tom just told him he had no idea who I was and that I'd run away after but he never believed him..."

"Yeah well, Dumbledore has always been cleverer than _him_."

A loud, well spoken voice echoed throughout the empty classroom and all around the school. "Ladies and gents, please gather in the great hall, and be quick about it. If you're all very good then no injuries need be incurred today."

"Tom..." Hermione whispered. "Harry, what happened in the graveyard?"

"What?"

"The graveyard! What happened? When he got his body back!"

"Erm, Wormtail was there," Harry recalled, absent-mindedly rubbing his scar, "the cauldron was there. Cedric was stunned pretty bad so he had no chance of waking up and helping me to stop it..."

"Stunned?"

"Yeah, Voldemort stunned him," Harry looked confused, then realisation dawned. "He just stunned him, nothing more. He's fine."

Hermione sighed, half in relief and half in disbelief. At least _someone_ had got a second chance. "And how did he actually get his body back?"

"He took the bones of his father, some of my blood, Wormtail's...well, you know, and then there was a little bag of stuff that Wormtail had. It looked like a vial of blood or something. A couple of hairs as well, I think."

"And what did he look like?" Hermione was on the edge of her seat, almost ready to run out of the classroom and up to the great hall to see for herself.

"Exactly like he looked when he was here a couple of hours ago."

"Wow..."

"Does it matter what he looks like?" Ron asked, clearly annoyed.

"Ron, time's changed for Hermione. Everything that happened when she was in the past, everything she did and said, it's changed stuff, and she's about to see the consequences. Clearly it matters, or she wouldn't have asked."

"I need to go," Hermione said, getting to her feet. The book was sitting on a nearby desk. She bit her lip. "That's a horcrux," she told Harry.

Harry nodded and she left.

* * *

He was just walking into the great hall as she arrived and she jogged over to him. She stepped in front of him, walking backwards and glancing over her shoulder every other second to make sure she didn't hit anything.

"Ah, there you are. I've been waiting," he smirked and reached a finger out to touch her cheek.

"Stop this. Stop it now."

"Not even a hello? Not a 'well done for not turning into a monster despite the fact that I had so little faith in your ability to change your future'?"

"Tom just _stop_. _Please_!"

Tom looked her up and down and smiled appreciatively. "Fresh from the restricted section?" he asked.

"More or less," Hermione replied grudgingly, glancing over her shoulder.

Tom's smirk became more pronounced. "Watch the steps."

Hermione turned just in time so she didn't end up falling over the steps that led up to the teacher's table. Tom veered off to the left and Hermione followed, barely noticing as the hall filled with teachers and students.

Tom made his way along the back of the chairs, stopping when he reached the chair in the middle. He pulled it out and sat in it. It was Dumbledore's chair.

"Get out of that chair," Hermione said fiercely.

Tom frowned. "Why?"

"That's Dumbledore's chair."

"Dumbledore's dead," Tom replied.

"I don't care, get out of the chair."

"No," Tom said, as though Hermione had just asked him to cartwheel across the great hall.

"Tom, get out of it _now_!"

"The old codger's dead, Hermione, get over it. I rather like this chair," he put his feet up on the table and began tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair. "Besides, it's high time somebody intelligent took over this school."

Hermione acted before she had thought it through properly. She didn't recall raising her hand, nor did she recall actually slapping him, but she did recall the feeling of shock that followed, as well as the smarting pain in her right hand.

"Do it again, Hermione, I _like_ it," his cheek was red from where she had slapped him but he showed no sign of pain. He merely smirked at her, which only served to make Hermione want to turn her wand on him.

"Get out Tom," Hermione told him in a shaky voice, "get out of the chair."

Tom sighed dramatically and stood up. "Fine. Whatever makes you happy."

"If you leave here, that'll make me happy."

"No can do, I'm afraid. Since when do you hate me so much?" he took her by the arm and led her around to the front of the table. He lifted himself onto the the table top and leant back, his palms flat on the desk behind him. "Sit next to me."

Hermione complied.

Soon enough, the hall was full with every single teacher and every single student. Hermione scanned the thick crowd, looking for Harry and Ron but her attempt was futile; even with Ron's vivid hair colour it was like looking for a couple of needles in an oversized haystack.

The teachers and oldest students were at the front, the younger students having been pushed to the back behind the more advanced wizards. A barrier in case things kicked off.

"I've gathered you all here," Tom hadn't raised his voice at all, hadn't used any spells to increase the volume, yet every word was audible throughout the entire hall, "firstly to introduce your new headmaster. That's me, by the way," Tom smirked and Hermione felt sick, his charming, casual tone much more repulsive than she remembered, "and secondly, to let you know that the lovely Hermione," he put his arm around her shoulders and the stomach acid began to rise in her throat, "has been meddling with time. Basically, if it weren't for her, quite a few of you would already be dead. People on that list include the beloved Cedric Diggory," there was a gasp, and Tom smirked at the reaction, "the _true_ Hogwarts champion. Sirius Black, the man who -"

"Sirius is okay?" Hermione interrupted. It felt like a fist had clenched around her heart and stopped it from beating.

"He's fine. Annoyingly fine, actually. Was it Bella who killed him?"

Hermione nodded and the fist relinquished its grip.

"So that's why you wanted me to get rid of her, to save poor Harry even _more_ heartbreak?"

"Why did you stun Cedric?" Hermione asked quietly. "Why didn't you just kill him?"

"Would you like me to set things right? I can summon him here now, if you like."

"No!" Hermione said quickly. "I just meant, why did you decide to stun him rather than kill him?"

"You said no students, remember?" Tom explained with a shrug.

Hermione frowned. "I said no teachers but you still killed Dumbledore."

"You didn't say no _head_teachers."

"I hate you sometimes," she whispered her fingers trembling with anger. He had barely changed and he infuriated her. Change was what she had wanted him to do least of all, but now she just felt sick being in his presence. Perhaps she was finally having a rational reaction to him. It was about time, she thought bitterly.

"No you don't, you adore me," he was smirking again.

"Tom!" the voice was strong and sure. The crowd shifted slightly to allow the speaker through.

Hermione looked up and saw that Harry had made his way through the throng of students. Ron was following close behind him.

"Ah, Potter, didn't your muggle family ever tell you that lateness is impolite? We've all been gathered here for quite a while. You should thank Hermione, by the way. She saved your dear Godfather's pathetic little life. Say thank you like a _good boy_."

"Tom, _stop it_," Hermione hissed.

Harry said nothing, but the look he gave Hermione expressed more thanks than words ever could. Thanks for letting him have something that vaguely resembled a father figure, a family of his own.

Ron's face was twisted into a grimace behind Harry. It was only seconds before it happened that she noticed he had the book in his arms and a basilisk fang clutched in his right hand. Tom noticed too, for as soon as Ron had raised his arm and started plunging the fang downwards, he shot a spell towards him. The book and fang iced over instantly with thick ice which looked as crystal clear as glass and Ron dropped them.

Tom summoned them with a frantic wave of his wand.

The fang was frozen to the book, resting on its tip. Tom was muttering, his face panic stricken as he examined it.

"Maybe it's for the best," Hermione said gently. "I don't think horcruxes are -"

"It's not the horcrux I'm worried about," Tom hissed. "How do you feel?"

"I...fine," Hermione replied, confused.

"Positive?" Tom asked, not taking his eyes off of the book.

"Yeah...Tom, what's -"

"Leave." Harry had approached while Tom had been looking at the book. "Get out of here and don't come back."

"Shut up Potter, there are more important things going on right now."

"Like what?"

"Like the fact that your idiotic sidekick almost killed Hermione," Tom growled.

"What?" Harry and Hermione asked in unison.

"This book has got her blood in its pages. It's what makes her able to travel between my past and her present..." Tom bit his lip as he held the book up to look at it from a different angle. "I can't tell if the fang's gone in and I can't risk unfreezing it in case I've frozen the venom..." he rubbed the side of his face anxiously.

"Her blood's in that book? So it's like a horcrux?" Harry asked, seemingly forgetting the fact that a thousand people were crowded into the great hall for what was supposed to be Tom's greatest victory.

"Don't be stupid, Potter. It's the soul that creates a horcrux, not the blood. Her blood merely connects us. But if the venom's got in there and it's poisoned her blood..."

"But the blood's just in the book, it's not in her veins, Ron didn't stab _her_ with the fang," Harry reasoned.

"Her blood is her blood no matter where it is."

Hermione winced as her hand smarted. She looked at it to find the source of the pain.

"Tom," she said quietly.

"Hang on," he was chipping carefully away at some of the ice around the fang to get a better view.

"Tom," Hermione spoke louder this time.

"What?" he asked, finally looking up.

"My hand's bleeding," she held up her palm and showed him the small pool of blood that had formed there for no obvious reason. "Same place you cut me."

Tom's face lost the little colour it normally carried. He tore the fang from the book, ice shattering over him as he did so.

"How do you feel?" he demanded.

"Fine," Hermione answered. "I mean, a little tired but I've had a long day."

"Tired?" Tom repeated, his eyes wide and panicky. He winced suddenly, though apparently he had no reason to.

"What's wrong?" Hermione asked.

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does," Hermione persisted. "What's wrong?"

"Wormtail! Here, now!" Tom called sharply across the hall.

Wormtail came scuttling over and Hermione saw Harry stiffen, the hand which was holding his wand was shaking, clearly itching to turn it on the man who had as good as killed his parents.

"Kill him," Tom said to Hermione.

"Master! No! Please!" Wormtail dropped to his knees and began begging. Hermione felt sick.

"I'm not going to kill him, what good would that do?"

"If you kill him then we can make a horcrux for you," Tom said in a rush. "that way, if we can't manage to stop it I can give you your body back afterwards."

"No Tom! I'm not going to kill somebody else to save my own life!"

"Why not?"

Hermione's heart broke when she saw that he was genuinely confused as to why she wouldn't. How the hell had he missed out on the basic lesson that killing people was wrong?

"Do it Hermione, he's barely human anyway."

Hermione turned to look at Harry. "I'm not going to kill anybody, Harry! And I'm most certainly not going to use dark magic to save my own life! Am I the only one with any morals around here?"

"Yes, yes," Tom replied impatiently, "we all know you're sickeningly wholesome, but Hermione, there's only one cure and I _don't_ see any phoenixes around here. Do you?"

"You don't even know if the venom got in," she lied as she tried to ignore the pain which was slowly creeping over her.

"Yes, I do," Tom hissed.

"How?" Hermione demanded.

"Because I can feel my soul _burning_," Tom said through gritted teeth. "I can feel it being torn into a thousand pieces and every single one of _those _pieces being torn into a thousand pieces, too.

"Can't you fix it?" Hermione asked quietly.

"It doesn't matter," Tom replied, picking up the book again even though they both knew he could do nothing.

"Yes it does, it's your soul!"

"It's not as important as your life! Why the hell did you give the book to the witless wonder? What did you possibly think you could achieve by doing that? Get out of the way, Wormtail!" Tom aimed a sharp kick at Wormtail but he dodged it and scuttled away, back to the group of death eaters who had accompanied Tom on his journey to the castle.

Hermione didn't answer him. She was concentrating on showing no sign of pain even though it felt like her skin was on fire. She could feel the progression of the venom around her body, most painful at her hand, but not having reached the left side of her body yet.

"Is it hurting?" Harry asked.

Hermione glanced up at him and after a moment he nodded, understanding her look to mean yes. A sudden numbness washed over her and she felt as though her mind was separate from her body.

"Better?" Tom asked.

"A little," Hermione replied.

"Hermione," Harry said, "Fawkes will come."

"Don't be stupid, Potter. Fawkes is Dumbledore's pet and since when has Dumbledore ever done me any favours?"

"How is it doing you a favour?" Harry asked. "It's Hermione's life he'll be saving, not yours."

"She is the only person that actually means anything to me," Tom replied, his attention completely on the book, determined not to look at Harry or Hermione. "Dumbledore would love to deprive me of anything that makes me happy."

"Trust you to leave the nicest thing you've ever said about me until I'm about to die," Hermione smiled vaguely, Tom's numbing charm seemed to have numbed her mind slightly as well; everything was starting to become fuzzy.

"You're not _dying_. Hermione, please, just make the horcrux."

"No," her voice sounded distant to her own ears, but still firm, and the light was beginning to hurt her eyes.

Tom hissed impatiently.

"I'm tired," Hermione said. "And it hurts." She laid down on her side on the table and closed her eyes, though this did nothing to ease the pain. It made her feel slightly less sick, but that had been the least of her worries.

"No, Hermione sit up," Harry's voice was soft and distant, like he was speaking to her through a pillow.

Numbness engulfed her again, but only for a brief moment before the pain returned.

"It's not working," she moaned.

"What can we do?"

"I'm _thinking,_ Potter."

"Think faster!"

"Severus! Are there any apothecaries that keep a stock of phoenix tears?"

"No, my Lord, waiting lists are months long."

Tom growled.

"Fawkes will come," even though his voice sounded muffled, Hermione could hear the doubt in Harry's tone. "He _will_ come. Hermione's always been loyal to Dumbledore, he won't punish her for what you've done. He won't."

"Potter we can't afford to sit around and wait for Dumbledore's stupid pet bird when he's not even going to -"

Hermione could hear music. It felt like a lullaby, gently edging her closer and closer towards sleep. It felt like home, and it felt like everything was okay.

"-come," Tom finished, and the shock was evident in his voice.

Hermione felt warmth nearby and was almost able to smile.

"It's not Fawkes," Hermione barely heard Harry's whisper.

"Does it matter?"

"Look at the eyes."

"Potter for Merlin's sake! She's dying! Get the stupid bird to save her!"

"I don't think he's just going to save her. He wants something in return."

"What? How can you know that?"

"He seems like he wants to make a deal."

"Here's the deal. If she dies, so does every other miserable person in this hall. Horrible, painful deaths. If she dies -"

Hermione tried to protest but the only sound she could muster was a low moan.

"That's not the kind of deal he wants."

Tom huffed loudly.

"I think he'll save her if you stop."

The voices were becoming fainter but it was still easy to distinguish between the two. Hermione just wished she could open her eyes and see what was happening.

"Stop what?"

"Everything."

"I thought you said he wasn't going to punish her for what I've done?"

"She's not going to want you if you carry on, anyway. She's too good."

"It didn't matter to her before."

"Tom, she's dying. If she really matters to you, isn't it worth it?"

"She's supposed to be your friend, Potter! How can you let her life hang in the balance like this?"

"What's your answer, Tom?"

The answer was lost to the darkness.

* * *


	16. Epilogue

**A/N:** And so this thirty day love affair comes to an end. It feels like it's taken longer, but really it's only been thirty days (how proud I am to have completed something longer than a one-shot in less than a month!). I want to take this opportunity to say thank you for the last time to all of you have reviewed, especially those of you who always take the time to review each chapter with such wonderful praise and observations. The fast updating is without a shadow of a doubt completely down to all of you and the way in which you motivate me so wonderful that writing seems to have taken over my Christmas and New Year. This is the end, I'm afraid, there will be no sequel, I promise you that now. Thanks to those who have hopped on over to Eclairs, which is my main project now. I will be writing more Tom very soon though, I get withdrawal symptoms if I don't. Anyway, this rambling note has finished, so all that remains is for me to say that I hope you enjoy it and I eagerly await your thoughts. Thanks again for being so fantastic.

* * *

**Restricted.**

**by Flaignhan.**

* * *

"Ron wants to see her."

"He's welcome to. As long as he stays ten feet away from me at all times. I'm worried his stupidity might be contagious."

"You _did_ possess his little sister and ruin her first year at Hogwarts, be fair."

"And be _fair_, he's the reason that she's in this state in the first place. Do try and keep him from making another attempt at murdering her, will you?"

"Ten minutes, please, just give him ten minutes."

"I'm _not_ leaving her. Besides, Ginny comes in here, she's fine with my presence, so he should be too."

"Ginny's used to you...in a weird way."

She was tired and sore. Her limbs felt heavy and the light which shone through her eyelids hurt the nerves at the back of her eye. The pain travelled all the way into the back of her head, which was already exceedingly painful without the light making it worse. The only good thing, the only comfort amongst all the discomfort was that she was incredibly warm and snug, wrapped up in thick blankets and clothed in what felt like her favourite soft pyjamas.

"Too bright," she murmured. Her throat was dry and the words seemed like they had to rip their way out of her vocal cords, leaving them a ragged mess.

The light beyond her closed eyes disappeared as the sound of curtains being pulled shut assaulted her head. The darkness felt cooling to her aching eyes.

"Hermione? Can you open your eyes?"

It was the last thing she wanted to do, but the softness and familiarity of the voice convinced her that it would be the right thing to do. She couldn't make out much in the dark. She moaned as she was gently moved into a sitting position, her limbs aching from lack of use.

"Drink this," Harry's voice was recognisable in the dark. He pressed a small cup into her hands and Hermione raised it to her lips with shaking hands.

It tasted awful but the effect was far from it. A shiver passed through her whole body, depositing little pieces of energy as it went, leaving Hermione feeling like she just had a bad hangover rather than like she'd been in a coma.

"How do you feel?" Tom asked, frowning in concern.

"Great," Hermione replied dully. "Terrific, actually."

"There will be time for sarcasm later, Hermione. Truth is what I'm looking for at the moment."

Hermione looked at Tom with tired eyes. "I feel awful," she settled back into her pillows and glanced at Harry.

"Don't give him your blood ever again, will you?" Harry said with a sigh.

"How about you keep your pet monkey away from the fangs of _my_ late basilisk in future?"

"Ron thought he was just destroying your horcrux, he was doing the right thing," Harry argued in defence of his best friend.

"Not in my book," Tom replied. "I'm rather fond of my horcruxes."

"Hope it hurt when he stabbed it."

"Can you stop? I've got an awful headache and you two aren't helping in the slightest."

"At least he's not trying to kill me, Hermione. Makes a nice change, actually," Harry grinned at her and Hermione smiled weakly in return.

Tom's face twisted awkwardly and he looked like he wanted to reach for his wand and amend the situation of Harry's well-being.

"What happened?" Hermione asked. "Did Fawkes -"

"It wasn't Fawkes," Harry interrupted. "But he saved you nonetheless."

"Saved? She wouldn't have been in here for the last week if you and that bloody bird hadn't been faffing around making bargains with her life!" Tom's eyes flashed angrily.

Harry put his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly, causing Hermione to wince as the sound ripped through her head. It was soon replaced by soft, soothing music and a brilliantly coloured bird fluttered through the open window of the hospital wing. The bird landed on Harry's knee and cooed softly as he stroked its feathers.

"He wouldn't save your life unless Tom thought it was _really_ worth it," Harry explained, nodding towards the phoenix. "Well, that's what he wanted Tom to think, anyway."

Hermione frowned. "What d'you mean?"

"He means you'd better be bloody grateful because I've lost everything, thanks to you," Tom's expression was sour.

"He saw a chance for bettering you, Tom, and he took it. You said she was the only person that actually mattered to you, and if she matters to you then it's worth it, isn't it? He saw a chance and he took it. He wouldn't _really_ have let her die. Come on, think who you're talking about..."

Tom huffed angrily.

"What are you talking about?" Hermione asked, more confused than ever.

"Look at his eyes, Hermione," Harry told her, nodding towards the head of the phoenix.

Hermione followed instructions and met the gaze of the phoenix. Bright twinkling blue eyes stared back at her.

"How?" she asked simply.

"Phoenixes are born from fire, most commonly at the funeral of a witch or wizard. It's rare – that's why there are so few phoenixes. _Annoyingly_, it happened with your dead headmaster. He decided to show off just one more time," Tom sneered at the phoenix which cooed softly in response.

"You remember the phoenix that rose from his tomb, Hermione?" Harry prompted. "On the day of the funeral?"

"I thought that was Fawkes," Hermione said.

"So did I. Everyone did."

"Is it actually him?" Hermione asked, frowning slightly at the phoenix. "Is it his mind trapped inside the body of a phoenix or -"

"He's moved on," Harry said.

"It's like a portrait. Just because it can talk and think the same as the living person did, it doesn't mean that the person is living inside the portrait," Tom explained. "But that bird is still just as irritating as -"

"What did you lose? You said you lost everything. What was 'everything'?" Hermione asked, interrupting Tom, bored of his petty insults.

Tom stopped talking instantly and scowled at the polished wooden floor.

"Tell her," Harry prompted, grinning smugly.

"The bird decided, with help from _Potter_," he spat Harry's surname, "that you would die unless I gave everything up. All my dreams, all my ambition, gone. No more horcruxes, no more killing, no more torture and no more power. Nice for your friend and dead headmaster to play with your life like that, don't you think?"

"We wouldn't have really let you die," Harry assured her quickly. "I'd never be able to let that happen. We needed to give Tom a chance though, now that he's got someone to care about. Somebody worth sacrificing things for."

"Stop it, Potter, you're making me wretch."

"You agreed?" Hermione said, turning to Tom. She could barely believe it. Of course she had no idea how different Tom was this time around, not having really spent too much time in his company yet. Yes, he had listened to Hermione and as a result, a great number of people were alive who hadn't been alive before. Even so, to give up on everything he had worked for over the last half a century, for her measly little life, particularly astonishing when she considered how very little regard he had for life in general...

"Yes," Tom said stiffly. "Of course I did."

"Barely even thought about it actually," Harry added, struggling to conceal a grin.

The door of the hospital wing opened and Ginny trotted in, her hair tied up in a pony tail, swinging from side to side as she walked.

"Morning!" she said cheerfully. "Oh! You're awake!" she dashed over to Hermione and threw her arms around Hermione's neck, hugging her tightly.

"Ginny, give her some space, she's only just woken up."

"Sorry," Ginny apologised, moving back towards Harry and sitting in the empty chair next to him. "How do you feel?"

"Fine," Hermione told her, despite it being a mild lie. She was, after all, as fine as could be expected after being poisoned by basilisk venom, but she still felt like she had fallen out of the tallest tree in the forbidden forest and hit every single branch on the way down.

"So Tom, drawn up any new career plans?" Ginny asked conversationally.

Tom narrowed his eyes at her.

"You could always go back to writing for _Cheeky Charms_," Hermione suggested, biting her lip as she smiled.

Tom's look of displeasure moved from Ginny to Hermione.

"Well what about teaching? You said you wanted to teach."

"Oh, because they're going to let _me_ be a teacher," Tom replied sarcastically, his lip curled in a sneer. "It's all Dumbledore's fault. If he'd have given me a job all those years ago -"

"You _were_ too young, though," Hermione said reasonably.

The phoenix hooted again and Tom hissed quietly.

"Oh that's really nice..." Ginny cooed, taking Hermione's hand and examining it closely, tilting it so she could see it at different angles. "Are they real diamonds?"

Hermione frowned, confused, then saw that the ring Tom had conjured so long ago was on her finger. "Who put that on?" she asked.

"Me. I took it from your robes. It was exactly where I left it. And yes, they are real diamonds, I don't conjure any cheap rubbish," Tom's smirk had returned.

"You've got good taste, Tom," Ginny told him. "It's pretty."

"Slytherins always have immaculate taste, I'll have you know, Ginevra."

Ginny scowled at the use of her full name.

* * *

"But he's You-Know-"

"Oh change the record, Ron," Hermione sighed, folding her arms across her chest. "You have no idea what Voldemort was like in my memory, and Tom's a billion times better than he was. He wasn't even human before, Ron. Tom's still human. It makes all the difference."

"Yeah, but -"

"If you're just going to argue then you can go away."

Ron sighed, giving in for the time being. He ran a hand nervously through his flaming red hair. "I'm really sorry about the whole almost killing you thing."

"It's all right. I didn't know, you couldn't have possibly known. No damage was done," Hermione smiled at him reassuringly.

Ron picked at a loose stitch on his jeans. "You really gave him your blood?"

"Yes," Hermione replied. That had been the most common enquiry from all of her friends. Why had she given her blood to Lord Voldemort? How could she be so stupid? Hermione provided her usual answer. "I trusted him. I still do."

"Yeah, well I think you're an idiot," Ron said, although his tone suggested he had given up arguing.

"That makes two of us then," Hermione replied airily.

Ron laughed softly and grinned.

* * *

**The End.**


End file.
